I'm not usually much of an alarmist. I combine a certain amount of denial (it's not here yet), skepticism (it's probably not going to reach us) and stoic fatalism (there's not much I can do about it so why panic). I think this attitude has helped me walk that fine line between knowing what's going on in the world and being totally freaked out by what's going on in the world.

Well, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is going to be the exception that proves the rule. This one has me a little scared. Read this article posted to Dave Farber's Interesting People list. The quote to remember:

It's now clear that early guesses about the pathogen's infectiousness were too optimistic, and that means more stringent measures to contain the outbreak are now justified.

The combination of the apparent virulence of the disease with the "spin control" attitude of the governments involved will be deadly. When politicians makes life and death decisions about things they don't understand, they are truly failing the people.

Although I am no longer in denial or skeptical of the risk, I still don't know what I can do about it. All I know of the symptoms is that it is a lot like a flu or a cold. I don't even know the incubation period. I don't know if anyone does. I'm going to learn more.

More than ever, don't trust what your government has to say. I'm more likely to trust my local health officials to give me an honest answer than a politician at the state or federal level. Unfortunately, it isn't clear that the local official will have access to all the information. I'm going to learn more.

Some governments are already taking an active stance. Singapore is imposing what some might call draconian quarantine measures. Good for them. Canada is warning about hot zones for travellers but it isn't clear if they are being aggressive enough with the breakout in Toronto. It took me quite a while to find the right site in the US. Neither the US Surgeon General or the US Department of Health and Human Services had anything. I finally remembered to go to the Center for Disease Control and found this advisory. Even on this site it was hardly front page news.

The WHO posted a warning on March 15th. I remember hearing about it but there was little I could do about it and the real sense of urgency wasn't there yet. Strangely, they haven't posted an update since then. I did find a link on Canada's site pointing to some statistics that were 10 days old.

Why isn't this front page news? Gee, I wonder? There's a huge "embedded" press maching churning out stories about the war.

I live in a community with strong international ties, plenty of us travel internationally and domestically. One of my friends frequently travels to Hong Kong and China. The ease with which this disease spreads via airplanes puts us into a higher risk category. I'm frankly a little nervous about Tammy flying to Florida and back. You can be sure that I will be tracking the disease's spread and if necessary, asking Tammy to prolong her stay.

My only suggestion is to be more sensitive to the usual cold and flu symptoms and to recommend that even moderately sick children stay at home from school.

How ironic that during a war when our country is wreaking havoc on another, where we are all at risk from terrorism that it is a variation of the common cold that freaks me out.

@F: When governments fail their people

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