{"id":9560,"date":"2014-10-14T11:39:49","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T18:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/simonburrow.com\/\/?p=9560"},"modified":"2014-10-14T11:39:49","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T18:39:49","slug":"remembering-sars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/?p=9560","title":{"rendered":"Remembering SARS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ebola is the new SARS.\u00a0 In 2002 SARS was according to the news media “ravaging Asia.”\u00a0 By the time it was finished 700 people had died.\u00a0 And we moved on to other crises. But I saved the book as exhibit one in the cautionary tale.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

First you need some perspective.\u00a0 SARS killed 700 people worldwide.\u00a0 Swimming pools kill 3000 people every year in the USA.\u00a0 Ebola has already killed 4000 people worldwide.\u00a0 More people than that die every month in car accidents in the USA.\u00a0 Where is the media fuss?<\/p>\n

I suspect that we have a primal need to be afraid and the media and other opinion leaders are giving us what we want.\u00a0 It is probably the same reason we flock to Space Invader and Apocalypse movies.<\/p>\n

Plagues have historically been particularly scary and most nations have built public health institutions to try and hold them at bay.\u00a0 It is working.\u00a0 Epidemics are well controlled generally and I predict that the Ebola Scare will fade away just like SARS did.<\/p>\n

I’m going to spend my worrying energy on the danger of Halloween candy which we were warned about in 2009 at the CDC Conference on Obesity.
\n<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

And you should buy the book about Ebola and save it.\u00a0 You’ll be ready to help abate the next plague fear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ebola is the new SARS.\u00a0 In 2002 SARS was according to the news media “ravaging Asia.”\u00a0 By the time it was finished 700 people had died.\u00a0 And we moved on to other crises. But I saved the book as exhibit one in the cautionary tale. First you need some perspective.\u00a0 SARS killed 700 people worldwide.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-simon-says"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p99jGb-2uc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9560"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9564,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9560\/revisions\/9564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}