In today's broadcast, Morning Edition reports that, so far, the patients with suspected cases of SARS reported in the US appear to have a high recovery rate, and that there are no deaths reported yet. (Knock on virtual wood.)

Health investigators are speculating that the contagion vector may be different for the people in the US suspected to have SARS, and that some people are more efficient virus transmitters than others for reasons not yet known.

There is also speculation that, without an accurate test widely available, many of the possible American SARS patients don't have the disease at all. Doctors have been very conservative, putting people in isolation who exhibit any unusual symptom connected with SARS. A test for the suspected corona virus (still not proven to be the culprit, scientific caution being rightly applied) should be available very soon.

In the meantime, the Chinese are apparently more willing to cooperate. Doctors from the World Health Organization are going there to investigate the vector of disease transmission to discover why China's population has exhibited so much more vulnerability that populations, so far, elsewhere.

The WHO, as I'm sure many of you know, is a branch of the "irrelevant" United Nations.

Just as an aside, we in southern Pennsylvania have been under the pall of a horrendous respiratory flu, or at least that's what we've been calling it. It knocks people out for as long as a month -- a week or two bedridden, and a couple of weeks of weakened and restricted movement. Some of the flu-like symptoms are consistant with SARS, but some are not. People catch other opportunistic infections while they're on the mend by overextending themselves. I know at least three people who have developed pneumonia as a result of this, and maybe four, the most recent a 14-year-old boy.

I was down with the flu whatsit myself, and I can tell you, I'm not used to feeling so disoriented. The codeine was fun for a while though.

Ed's observation of the one-two punch of the pandemic a century ago made me think that maybe we are experiencing a global constellation of related ailments, some more deadly than others.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, nor have I played one on TV. (Who besides me is old enough to remember that commercial? ;) ) The whole "aside" is pure speculation on my part.

Regards--
Mary Anne