(Unpublished letter to the Globe and Mail)
Questions that should have been asked (and answered) about SARS before we panicked:
- Do relatively vague symptoms (high temperature, plus one of a number of respiratory symptoms, including cough) necessarily indicate a single pathogen?
- How were environmental causes or co-factors eliminated from consideration?
- Why do "SARS" symptoms in a person with no known direct or indirect contact with someone from Southeast Asia not result in a diagnosis of SARS?
- Have people recently arrived from the far east never come down with these symptoms shortly after arriving in Canada before?
- Were extra 'potent' pharmaceuticals, including antibiotics, prescribed once it was feared that a new pathogen was present?
- How can a test be known to be reliable when the pathogen that it is testing for is still unknown?
- Why have the media not asked these questions (or at least not published them, with corresponding answers, anywhere)?
Are we in fact witnessing an artificial phenomenon, where public health officials have realized that under-reacting to a potential threat is career suicide, yet over-reacting to a threat has minimal consequences, and might even make them look heroic?
Reference: SARS Case Definition
--
David Crowe
