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Webcams to Enforce Singapore Quarantine
magarity writes "Singapore has hired a private security firm to install internet connected webcams in homes of persons quarantined for SARS in order to watch them to see if they go out. They are considering adding electronic wristbands as well. 9 of the 490 persons have broken the quarantine despite a fine of 10,000 singapore dollars ($5,621US). Just over 100 people worldwide have died from SARS so far."
"It was just the cold!"
Do you dream of the dark man, too?
... and in reality is worn about the neck. It comes with a detonatable charge to sever the individual's neck should they attempt to go further than the 8' extension cord allows. Please hope they find an outlet in the bathroom
Now, all dilbert joking aside, this is one disease that scares me... without a common vector identified.... we might all be in for it.
Failing that, meet in in Boulder. Mother Abigail said that The Dark Man is gathering his own on the other side of the mountains. . .
You are not the customer.
The hottest sluts with mysterious respiratory diseases are waiting to chat with YOU!
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Why are we quarantining people over something with a 4% mortality rate? [thanks google]
We don't put electronic trackers on people with measles. Yet more government knee-jerk reactions....
So, who wants to take bets on how soon people will hack into these government quarantine webcams and then blackmail people to keep their private lives from being publicly displayed?
Suicide Booth: You are now dead! Thank you for using Stop and Drop, America's favorite since 2008.
Before you start on about 1984, this is happening in Singapore, not the US.
And to head off the inevitable Ashcroft / Patriot Act recriminations, please offer actual *proof* of claims that our civil liberties are being eroded.
Looks like we may get lucky this time -- hopefully. If a real killer virus hits, we're all doomed. :(
The people will be called randomly during the day and asked to turn on the camera to confirm that they are really there. The camera will not always be on. Just an extra precaution to make sure people don't just have someone else answer their phone.
...need to be taken until we learn more about this disease. It's not like you're in prison. You can lay on your couch naked, watch Jerry Springer and eat a block of cheese as big as a truck battery.
They could more than pay for that fine by just selling subscriptions. I'm sure there are some perverts that love checking out people with surgical masks on... maybe there's a SARS Fetish newsgroup somewhere?
Yeah, like everyone didn't know about Singapore. I wouldn't call this 'Big Brother', I'd call it protecting the people from the illness. Of course, I also think steel chastity belts for those with AIDS might have some merit...
Blar.
What makes SARS scary is the fact that we really don't know how it spreads. Also, the quickness with which the disease is spreading is also another reason to scare people. Like someone said in an above comment...it's just a common cold really. I would like to see the tracking system for a common cold and how that spreads around the world.
This is the story of 490 strangers forced to live in a quarantine block together and find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting SARS...
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
For those, like me, who didn't know a whole lot about SARS, someone typed up a real nice Wikipedia entry on SARS, including a nice table of diagnosed cases per country.
fifth sigma, inc.
A 60 minutes segment yesterday reminded views that SARS is far less dangerous than Malaria.
Malaria kills almost 1 million world wide per year.
It is also important to mention that SARS could just be a wake up call, one which prods the public to pursue these deadly diseases. If anything, SARS will establish guidelines to prevent future disease outbreaks.
http://www.cbsnews. com/stories/1998/08/01/48hours/main22761.shtml
Life is like pants... fit in or you don't fit in.
Wife been cheating on you? Annoying stalker on your nerves? Just call in that they have SARS, and let Big Brother control your problems!
Or for a more serious solution, just call in that they're a terrorist, and let the PATRIOT act have it's way!
So many great ways to accuse people and have their rights taken away, yay!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Can you say "Brave New World"
Science will save us. The question is, will it destroy us first?
Come on, this isn't a Big Brother issue. These people could be isolated in a high security quaratine wing of a hospital or they could be self-quarantined at home, which is a much better option for the patients concerned, emotionally and psychologically. As someone who's had to have life-saving surgery, I can tell you that recovering at home in familiar surroundings and with all the comforts of your own home (your own bed, TV, PlayStation, PC, internet access, books, etc) is far more preferable than recovering in hospital.
These people are carrying a highly contageous, deadly, virus. They have a responsibility, to other members of society as well as themselves, to behave responsibly until they have fully recovered and pose no further threat to the people around them. All it takes is for the situation in Singapore to deteriorate to one of near anarchy is for one of these individuals to act irresponsibly and go for a walk to the local supermarket.
Containment is the only thing that is stopping that society from breaking down right now. As it is, their hospitals are struggling to cope with the existing SARS cases that they already have.
Remember what happened in the US when everyone was paranoid about anthrax? Remember how people greeted people at their doors with surgical masks? Now do you see why they've taken these basic measures to protect the general public?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I am very afraid to tell you that, yes we do... Bush approves quarantine for mystery illness
www.bleepyou.com
Law enforcement agencies all over America are in the process of laying off 85% of their police force in favor of 100 strategically placed web cams across the United States.
Yea? Wait until you're "quarantined" and monitored, with a "disease" that has a 4% fatality rate.
This so-called "disease" is just a government tracking program designed to weed out undesirables and set them up with forced monitoring "for the health of the people". We're seeing the test phase. Wait until Ashcroft and corp deploy this "virus" to their target customers....
...in Toronto, causing Ontario public health officials to order 197 people into isolation.
And, by the way, it's now been discovered to be a relative of one of the many viruses that cause the common cold. But that kind of got overshadowed by all the war news.
As did the anti-war protest database being kept by the NYPD. But ignore this, it's off topic.
This would mean, for example, that in a few years we may have airborne varient strains of other viruses. Now, should an airborne strain of some slow infection cycle be created (like HIV/AIDS, or a pneumonia with a very slow cycle), then most of the world will be infected before the first casualty occurs. Obviously this is fatal situation for mankind. It's not the quick diseases like ebola that we have to fear, it's the slow ones.
Hope it doesn't happen, but with population densities growing I expect that it will.
Comments?
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
That's what they're doing here in Toronto. People that are refusing to obey the voluntary isolation are being forcibly confined. Some are also being changed by police. /. uhh, I mean working.
In fact one school and an office (HP in markham) have been closed because people refused to obey the voluntary isolation.
I even have family that works in one of the hospitals downtown. There's a lot of FUD about SARS on the news, but I'm not worried. I don't know anyone who's sick and while there are a few new cases being announced, the spread isn't rapid. So I'll just keep reading
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
Now we're gonna get new X2 cam pop-ups.. "Someone you love quarantined with a virus outbreak? Install an X2 cam to make sure they don't infect anyone else! Also install another one to subtly watch them undress... even if its your blood family..."
You're nothing; like me.
Another SARS claim predicting SARS is a pandemic, will start trading this evening.
Seastead this.
look it up
Great! Another Internet spread virus! Is it possible for my computer to become infected with this SARS virus? ;-)
If at first you don't succeed... How does that go again? Ah, forget it.
If SARS was spreading in the states as fast as it's spreading in SE Asia, then you can bet you'd see mandatory quarantines imposed, and if people violated it, to hell with the constitution, they'd be locked up for the duration (or longer).
There's a good reason for this too. If your mere presense in a room full of people represented a threat to their lives, I think they'd want you out of the room pretty fast.
I do agree that web-cams are a bit extreme, but the bottom line is that people can be total assholes when they're inconvenienced for a few days, and if they're going to flaunt the law (particularly one that is just and designed to prevent unneccessary deaths), they should expect to forfeit at least some of their rights.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
The WHO fail to tackle the spread of AIDS in the world, they fail to tackle TB Hepatitus or Lepracy (YES!) in the third world, they fail to tackle malnutrition in the third world, obesity in the first world or CJD at all. These dieases kill millions a year... AIDS has a 100% quick-kill rate you know???? The others are well in double (%) figures and all lead to premature death. ...and they make the headlines calling SARS a world wide health threat! SARS is a nasty disease, don't get me wrong, it is a nasty nasty disease... but it a cold-type virus (read long complex DNA structure). A cold-type virus mutates quickly (hence inability for a vaccine) but this mutation includes mutation from being so lethal (survival rate has climbed significantly, because of good care and because of this mutation).
SARS is a worldwide threat, but AIDS and others are already here, are already a lot more lethal, and what does the WHO and world governments do to prevent them?
Pure hypocracy, it makes me sick.
It's too early to state a mortality rate for SARS. Most of the people who have the syndrome were diagnosed much more recently than the first batch of victims, and we don't know how many of the current patients will survive. Simply looking at the number of people who have already died compared to the number of current cases (like some reporters have tried) does not give you reliable statistics in this case.
Also, the seriousness of an epidemic is determined by communicability as well as mortality. A disease that infects half the world population with 4% mortality is much more serious than one that infects just a few people with 50% mortality.
...which killed upwards of 20 MILLION people, had a mortality rate of 3%.
SARS seems to be *at least* as transmissible as the 1918 flu was.
That's why.
The whole plan, as far as I can see, is to eradicate the disease. It's in a very early stage right now, and if we can completely stop its spread and cure those who have it, then we will have no carriers of the disease at all. Do you know how many lives will be saved and how much work would become completely unnecessary if it's eradicated? We will not have to develop treatment for it. We will not have to develop a vaccine. We will not have to educate the public about it. Millions of people (or even hundreds of millions or billions of people) will never get sick.
If eradication can be accomplished through extremely vigilant quarantine, etc., then all the resources that might be spent fighting SARS can be spent fighting other diseases, like say AIDS.
For a bit of info on the benefits / feasibility of eradication, see here.
If you'll read the article, you'll see that 1984 parallels don't really work.
Those quarantined "will be called at random intervals daily and requested to turn on the camera and present themselves in front of the camera to show their presence," the ministry said.
The cameras stay off until the person turns it on. It's no more intrusive than someone knocking on your door and requesting to see that you're there (which is intrusive, but not frightingly so). Since the camera is under the control of the person under quarantine, this is more similar to being a video phone than 1984-type constant surveillance.
Just involving technology doesn't make something dystopian; how technology is used does. (The tracking wrist band for lawbreakers, something we do in the USA for people under house arrest, is a bit greyer.)
Did they come out of retirement?
From a Yahoo message board...
"maybe if other countries start some sanitary guildlines the rest of the world wouldnt have to suffer cause some Asian dude for got to wash his hands, after dropping one on the floor."
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Thats right sir and or madam, please wait at home and one of our top-notch webcam installation experts will be around sometime between the hours of 7 and 5, on Thursday, sometime in June.
They couldnt come up with a simpler, less (dare I say, pathetic use of the internet technologies) costly solution? Crap, try the phone T-Netix
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030405-9682133 5.htm
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
the OT link is actually pretty interesting. I'm glad that they destroyed it. :]
I read the full article about how the Chinese government in Singapore is violating people's right to privacy by placing a webcam in people's homes.
China != Singapore. Singapore is an independant state with its own (authoritarian) government. A majority of Singaporeans are ethnically Chinese, but there are also large Malay and Indian ethnic groups.
Of course it makes sense to quarantine people who are ill with SARS. No one knows many hard facts about it yet, except that it can spread really fast and it can kill. Quarantine is perfectly logical at this stage. In my opinion, anyone who knowingly breaks quarantine and recklessly puts other people in danger should be treated as a criminal.
Will they be given free internet access, so they have something to do?
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
Is that there is a vaccine for measles and people are routinely vaccinated against it.
Same for polio and many of the other worst nasties. Same for smallpox before it was considered near-extinct to the point where it wasn't a threat. (Damn the shitty security at Russia's storage facility...)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
wow, can someone say paranoid?
Singapore does not have a Chinese government. SIngapore is a seperate country.
Your opinions are severly prejudice.
Singapore is a western country, with a high GDP, a less corrupt government than the US (read corporate influence). The racial mix of SG is Malay, Chinese and others, christian, muslim and buddhist in strong numbers. There is no clear majority [do all people with 'slitty eyes' look the same to you?].
Take Hawaii for example, a mix of Pacific Islanders, Japanese, Chinese White and African Americans - would you like to call that an East Asian country full of people "_NOT_ like us"???
Your numbered points are laughable - take point 2 for some crass idiocy "most Taiwanese want Tibet to be in one China" - Taiwanese believe China is an occupied country and Taiwan should take control of it!!! Totally opposite!
I hope you are as unsuccessful as you are stupid, you surely deserve it.
Heh, the Chinese Government doesn't run Singapore,Mr. Troll.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
No one talks about the Flu epidemic of (I think) around 1910-1920. Killed people in towns so fast they had trouble burying them all. When the US sent troops to Europe in WWI I believe they were worried about spreading the flu virus (though they didn't know it was a virus) to everyone stuck on the small ships for the trip over seas. Not to scare people too much but this could happen again. We use our antibiotics way too much and aren't making new ones fast enough. And every year we get a new mutation on the flu. Most of the time it just makes you pretty sick maybe one of these days we will get another deadly mutation. Then again SARS and other deadly germs may be scary but in reality you are probably much more likely to get hit by a bus than to die of one of these things.
Hell that's not a bad idea as far as I'm concerned. These people are under quarrantine for a reason. I see no problem with shooting them if they refuse to comply. We know that people who have it can spread it. These 9 people are putting the lives of too many at risk.
You're not sufficiently paranoid. OK, maybe you are, in a sort of Howard Huges microbial way, but if you'll turn your creative anxieties a different direction for a moment -- to the powers of the state -- maybe you'll understand why death penalties for violating quarantine are a bad plan. What's to keep a state from indefinitely detaining someone in their house -- or hell, just shooting them -- by arbitrarily declaring them quarantined? Who's going to check on them and keep the state honest? By keeping the penalty for breaking a quarantine lower (say, monetary, a few hundred/thousand dollars), you get a safety valve for such problems.
(And this leaves aside the moral problems with shooting someone breaking a quarantine, real or supposed... especially with SARS. Not particularly more deadly than the flu. There might be a case to be made for Ebola, which'll kill 90% of its victims, but killing someone who is a vector for a 5% fatal illness, even a virulent one, is trading a probable death for a certain one).
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Talk about pointless ways to use the technology. Clearly the wristband (or legband) would be better. Let me suggest one obvious flaw to this:
Hmm..., I feel like going out and infecting a few thousand people with this deadly disease. If I do they might catch me and fine me. What do I do? Oh yea, I can leave the phone off the hook and if they do call they will get a busy signal and think I'm home!.
It wouldn't even matter if this would work or not, as long as some one might think it would work and try it. And it likely would work.
here's another:
Hmm..., I feel like going out and infecting a few thousand people with this deadly disease. If I do they might catch me and fine me. What do I do? Oh yea, I have a deadly disease and don't really give a rats ass about a fine if they do catch me (only used if I feel really, really sick).
Then again, these are the same people who knew about the disease for six months before warning the rest of the world, and didn't do a thing to restrict it's spread then.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
That will replenish the world's supply of fossil fuel -- us!
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
You have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning, huh?
Its a pretty scarey, big, bad world out there isn't it?
Check these guys out for a nice tinfoil hat.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
Holy cow, people. This has got to stop. The panic that's being spread here in Canada and the rest of the world is ore than a little ridiculous. Are we trying to make up for the world's lack of response to AIDS and other epidemics? Think about this: the virus has been known for a couple of months and it's killed 100 people. Not 100,000, not 100,000,000, but 100. Worldwide. The vast majority of these people have had weakened immune systems or were otherwise already sick. 100,000 people die each and every year in the US alone from pneumonia. 10,000 or so from influenza. Yet, the entire freaking world is panicking over a mutant cold virus that has kill 100 people in a couple of months. PLEASE, can we all calm down now? My god, feed me beans for a couple of months and I could kill 100 people.
If you are deemed a public health hazard (and the CDC has the authority to declare you such), you can be forced into quarantine.
People are quarantined regularly for TB.
We wouldnt use webcams to enforce it, more likely the leg transmitters that cons use.
In short, yes it would be legal.
And I'd rather have FUD run rampant than those who are infected, at least when we dont know how the disease is spread.
A 4% or so mortality rate on a grand scale would indeed be of Black Plague proportions.
The film "outbreak" is over-the-top hollywood, but pretty accurate so far as how the government is prepared to handle something like this.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
a bluetooth device embedded in a handcuff wristband that would fire an email on the host when the device is out of range from the PC.
Are those Linux based webcams?
they should put webcams in prisoner cells and prisons, so we can sit there and watch them rot
Or in this case, anti-sensationalistic which amounts to the same thing.
How many people will be dead by the time this virus is a year old? If we don't jump on it now, how many people will die annually from it five years from now?
How many people catch Malaria by sitting in the same room as someone else with Malaria?
Drawing stats on this (six month old) disease and comparing it to something that's established in the population and is transmitted by a completely different (and known) vector is the ultimate non sequitor. There's no connect. There's no line to draw. It's bullshit.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I can accept the quarantine, given a fairly high mortality rate and a significant mortality rate, but why webcams? It's bad in so many ways: invasion of privacy, huge monitoring costs (need >1 webcam per quarantined house), human error. Why not use the tracking device, with automated alert if they go out of range. If it can be set to a reasonable distance that the quarantine is still effective (or at least as effective as it has been so far), then at least some gov. official doesn't have to be subjected to watching someone sit at home scratching his ass all day...
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
I guess it saw "Singapore" near "Webcam" and just assumed the worst
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
Still more reasons why this is such a bad idea!!
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
No kidding. This thing is being reported as the kiss of death. This is the first time I've seen ANYTHING like the following in ANY news report:
Around two-thirds of people diagnosed with SARS in Singapore have recovered.
I wish someone would have said that earlier. It's the last line in the linked article, and it almost seems like an afterthought.
Why is it just like the media to never say "Oh, yeah, and people really ARE surviving this disease."
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
And sues the zoo for not placing a warning sign where it could be seen...
...given a fairly high mortality rate and a significant infection rate...
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
I'm sick of this 4% number, anyone with a calculator and an internet connection can do the math...
Goto http://www.who.int/csr/sarscountry/2003_04_10/en/ and look at the numbers...
2781 cases, 111 deaths... 111/2781= 3% mortality rate... Though this is wrong, since this is not including people who are sick, but not recovered or dead... For this we take the 1337 (r0x0r!) number of recovered cases, and do the same high school level math; which is 8%. Much worse than 4% (though I managed to suprise myself, expecting lower)
Further breaking it down, because most of these cases are from developing countries:
Canada 10%
China 4%
Hong Kong 3%
Malasia 33% (I death, skewed)
Singapore 7%
Thailand 28%
Vietnam 6%
Please notice that DEVELOPED countries have no deaths, besides Canada. Canada has had 97 cases and 10 deaths, while the US has had 154 cases and no deaths. UK 5/0; Germany 6/0; France 4/0. Actually among developed nations the mortality rate is only 3%, and is 0% ignoring Canada. (271 cases, 10 Canadian deaths.)
So as an America, I'm not worried, but would be if I was in East Asia, or Canada.
[note, please check my math... Not my strong point]
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
This must be the first virus not spread by microsoft outlook
Not as bad as the poorly timed Hong Kong ads - "Hong Kong ... it will take your breath away"
I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
Hey mods, this exact same offtopic, inflammatory, inappropriate and offensive crap has been recycled and posted nearly word-for-word on slashdot several times already (5691909, 5688688, 5705020, list goes on if you do a search) presumabily by the same racist/ignorant Anonymous Coward. Anonymous Coward, whoever you are, I don't know whether to laugh or feel sorry for how misguided you are.
Where is this 4% mortality rate coming from anyway?
Based on the numbers on the wikipedia link (I'll assume they are recently valid).
1448 RESOLVED cases. 111 Deaths. (1337 live)
Thats 7.67% mortality rate.
This disease kills 1 in 25, in industrialized asian nations. Worldwide, that's 200+ million people, should it spread.
The government of Singapore is trying to minimize the spread of the virus, and if those infected are not willing to cooperate by remaining in their homes waiting out the sickness, what else are they supposed to do? If they quarantine them in the hospitals, the doctors become infected (don't forget the disease killed its discoverer) and it will just spread. Quarantine is supposed to bottle up the infected, until their bodies defeat the virus.
Instead, those infected keep breaking quarantine, and keep going out into public where they can infect more people. I don't feel sorry for those that can't be trusted... after all, knowing that they are sick, can this be equated to attempted murder via infection?
I wouldn't discount it just because it's related to a more benign virus.
In the world of cats, there is a disease called FIP (Feline Infectious Peritonitis). It's caused by a corona virus. Some cats survive it fine (like a cold), but most (I think around 90% at least) die because their immune system starts to break down the lining of their abdomen and their nervous system. Their bellies swell up terribly (with pus) and they start to have seizures.
It sucks. If your cat gets it, I hihgly recommend giving them a merciful end. I wish I had for my two cats who got it.
So, just because it's a corona virus, and many corona virii are mostly harmless, don't assume that all corona virii are.
this from happening.
can they really be blamed?
The problem with a forced quarantine is that people may decide to leave their cases unreported for fear of quarantine. They will then go around spreading the virus without seeking medical treatement until it is absolutely neccessary. While a quarantinemaybe jutified, I am not sure if it is a great idea.
4% given advanced medical care. Approximately 10-20% of the cases so far require the aid of a mechanical respirator. If SARS spread sufficiently that we ran out of respirators, I assume the mortality rate would be higher.
As I said, it's one of the more contagious viruses (yes, that's the correct plural, asshole, you know who you are), and we have no idea how it is spread. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that for each person who has gotten it, they've given it to 2-3 people (I'm guessing from the speed of symtom development as well as the growth of the disease, and case studies). That, given your 4% mortality, means that if they have 500 people with the disease, NOT quarantining them will kill about 50 people. Not much fun, eh? And that's just in the first generation of spread.
Glad you're not in charge of the CDC. To sum up, this thing is incredibly acute, has a currently unknown vector other than general proximity/air, has no real cure, and is contagious. If there were ever a case for quarantine, you just found it.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Annual Deaths 2002
Heart Disease 724,915
Malignant Neoplasms (Cancer) 549,787
Stroke (cerebrovascular disease) 167,340
Chronic Lower Respiratory disease 124,153
Accidents (Car Accidents* - 42,437) 97,298
Diabetes Mellitus 68,379
Pneumonia & Influenza 63,686
Alzheimer's Disease 44,507
Kidney disease (Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, & nephrosis) 35,524
Septicemia (toxins in the blood - known as "blood poisoning") 30,670
I estimate that SARS may cause 1800 deaths the per year, a layman's view.
Open source development is my way of competing with the low-cost programmers in India...
He's not alone. A friend of mine once pointed to an MIT paper that quoted one of its sources as "National University of Singapore, Singapore, China".
Yup, you read that right. A paper from MIT.
More than mere navel gazing.
Moral issues aside, this seems like a poor way to monitor people. What's to stop you recording some video of you in the house, and playing it back while you're out? Didn't the designers watch Speed?
This is where a little media action [propaganda?] could actually be helpful! The CDC needs to get on CNN and Newspapers and start explaining to people what is expected should SARS land in their community! For the most part, it's not scary, they just want you to go home and stay home. There is an opportunity here to get people up to speed with dangerous disese controlls--masks, cleaning supplies, and procedures to follow. Just cause your kid brings it home from school doesn't mean the whole house will get it. BUT.. they need to get the word out Before they start locking people down, not after they start. It would reduce the fear in the public--and the public's fear of a thing is often worse than the thing itself! If it only kills one out of 25 that get it, but we have to arrest and threaten everyone who might come in contact, then our fears end up killing more people than the disease! Now is the time to inform people calmly, logically, and fairly before there is the need for more "drastic" measures.
Who knows, maybe they could get cable hooked up or at least a stay on the utilities untill the people are deemed healthy again. Non-disease considerations are as much a part of the problem as the actual quarintine. People need assurance they won't loose their jobs, utilities, food, and contact with the outside world as well as being safe for the community. Those considerations should be addressed as well!
Scary. But not quite so scary when you consider that the current WHO estimate is that 250,000-500,000 people die every year world-wide from influenza.
Too bad they did not do the same for AIDS...
Blogging because I can...
That's right - Influenza killed 63,730 people in the US in 1999, according to the CDC. Flu has a mortality rate of around 1.5%.
If you want to make a *very* rough extrapolation of the data, assuming that SARS is about as virulent and becomes as prevelent as influenza, you might expect it to kill *at least* 130,000 people in the US per year. Bear in mind that the widespread use of an influenza vaccine reduces 'flu deaths considerably... we don't yet have a vaccine for SARS.
That would conservatively put SARS as the third or fourth leading cause of death in the country (yes, above accidents and car crashes, too).
So yes, SARS is a point of concern, should it become endemic in the population.
Uh, insert something funny here.
No seriously, I was searching through all of the comments to make sure I wouldn't be redundant.
I must have been the only one to read this and think "Asian webcams. Huh huh."
Okay, joke #2.
If they ever want to go out, they can always just put the webcam on a loop, just like in Speed!
*sigh*
I should probably stop posting now.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
The figures are just for the first year. Figure on it escalating logarithmically until everyone has been infected, or some kind of solution is found.
1800 the first year, half a million the second year, etc. Fortunately, heart disease doesn't work the same way.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Has anyone considered the posibility that SARS is actually an engineered virus? It would surpise me if it was created by North Korea to wipe out the South. Hell, we get enough of that theme from movies and video games to discount it. Think of the public hysteria if it came out that this was actually the case.
Then again, it could be good-ol' Mother Nature bringing the population down to managable levels.
Slashdot moderators still have not found a sense of humor.
Offtopic maybe (like 90% of slashdot posts), but a troll?
sigh, sometimes it's hard to be an alpha...
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
These people are carrying a highly contageous, deadly, virus.
Ridiculous. SARS is massively overhyped. Somewhere, someone is making money off of selling it as way more dangerous than it is. Could be normal media alarmism, maybe some government wants to discourage tourism somewhere, or maybe it's just plain bad luck where doctors want to get their names in the paper.
SARS has a lower mortality rate than the goddamn *flu*, folks. It's not particularly widespread. It's caused fewer deaths than the regular old cold does in a year (only a hundred people worldwide, total!), and several orders of magnitude less than the flu does every year.
Even *diseases* aren't that much of an issue among most of the people panicking. For a citizen of a prosperous nation, obesity-induced heart attacks or car crashes are far, far, more likely to be a cause of death.
Nor are hospitals particularly "overwhelmed". There have been a few thousand SARS cases worldwide. Hong Kong has a lot of worried people because the climate and cramped conditions with a huge population results in major health problems every year. Hong Kong has far, far worse flu problems than the United States does, year round.
Don't believe me? Look at the World Health Organization or CDC websites. They have SARS information up, and aren't particularly upset about it. "If someone on my cruise ship comes down with SARS, should I seek medical attention or leave the boat?" "Naw, it's fine."
May we never see th
...keep in mind that not all non-fatal cases are reported.
Incidently, you're right in criticizing the grandparent post, though for the wrong reason -- China has not released the health data.
May we never see th
Because we can. It's too late to limit the spread of the cold, or influenza, or AIDS, but SARS is new enough that we still have a chance to slow it down.
I get sick? So people install video cameras in my house?
Spring's coming, thank God I don't get hayfever. Oh, damn, I do. Guess I'd better get used to masturbating in front of a webcam.
SARS is a big deal. It has a mortality rate of about 4% and this is with suspected patients rushed to hospital, pumped full of advanced antiviral drugs and kept in the best intensive care money can buy. Its mortality rate is much higher in untreated cases. It seems to be at least as virulent as the flu.
Do the math. The flu, which has a mortality rate of only 1-2%, kills hundreds of thousands around the world each year. If SARS is not successfully contained, millions will die, mostly in the third world which does not have the kind of medical care available in Singapore.
SARS is still spreading. The outbreak is not over yet. If it reaches densely populated poor urban centres like Calcutta, Rio de Janeiro, or the projects in LA, Chicago or New York, all hell will break loose. This is bigger than some minor conflict in Iraq. This is serious shit.
You should be thankful that cities like Singapore, Hong Kong and Toronto are trying so hard to keep SARS under control. Singapore and Hong Kong are the world's two busiest seaports and both are major air transport hubs. They are now the world's bulwark against contagion and if they fail millions will die.
Singapore is the best equipped city in the world to weather the storm. She is a first world country, with per capita GDP equal to the UK. She has the best health care system in the world.
The country is highly controlled and regulated. I am all for civil rights and freedom, but this is one of those times that strong authority is needed to enforce quarantines and stop people acting stupidly. The government is on the ball, among other things shutting down schools, imposing mandatory screening at the airport, and even deploying the army to stop SARS. Honestly, if Singapore cannot contain SARS, the world is fucked.
As an aside, most of the SARS deaths in Singapore are health care workers working with those infected with SARS at the hospital where they are all being concentrated in. I salute the duty, bravery and valor of these men and women.
A 4% or so mortality rate on a grand scale would indeed be of Black Plague proportions.
;)
Really? IIRC, the Black Plague was actually one of the biggest catalysts for the Renaissance in Europe. Yes, that's right. We may get Farscape back after all!
And if you think that this is Singapore-only, think again. Every nation, including the US, has public health regulations in place to quarantine people when there is a medical emergency.
OK, I know over 100 people have died of this desease and I feel for the families, I really do but why is the media hyping up this desease so much?
Yes, 100+ people died for SARS but what about the THOUSANDS of people who die EVERY SINGLE DAY in poor countries because of either famine, war or poverty?
All this hype is doing is creating mass panic.
If someone's going to force me to stay indoors all the time, or else face a hefty fine, then I'd rather live at the government's expense in an isolated building and receive proper treatment. If they want to protect lives it shouldn't be at the detriment of the current victims. It's already hell enough to suffer from SARS anyways.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Have you even been to Singapore? Have you ever met, and TALKED TO a singaporean chinese? No, but you READ ABOUT them in The Economist, so they HAVE to be retards... I see... I've lived in Singapore for about a year now. First of all, chinese is far from the only race here (in fact, the president isn't even chinese). Most chinese do NOT support this nonsense. And obviously you don't even know what you're talking about since the camera is NOT there to monitor your every move, it's there to be turned on for a short while a few times every day by the user to confirm that you're not off spreading the disease outside your home.
Look at it this way. It will be great for keeping the world's population under control! I wonder if there are places setup that just sit in quaruntee waiting for this kind of thing to decimate mankind before they come out of hiding and repopulate the earth.
SARS isn't so bad, yet there are quarantines, as well there should be for harmful diseases. If the world were interested in preventive medicine rather than reactive hype, then more quarantines should be made for MDR TBC which is real bad. Unlike the kinder, gentler SARS, MDR TBC is usually a death sentence which takes years of physical wasting until drowning/suffocation can occur. The exception is if rigorous attention to treatment and medical supervision is given.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Actually, Sweden used to follow the middle path between free market and socialism, using the best where it applied. In the late 1980's early 1990's there was an ideological shift manifested as a hard swing to the right and a mania for privitization, even in situations where it doesn't fit or even causes harm.
There's hard data should you care to look, but national debt, dirty sidewalks, street crime, bad grades, even bad teeth, rise in direct proportion to the imbalance.
There's also hard data should you care to look, showing that some of the controls really increased quality of life. Clean water was one of them. Stockholm, once, was the Calcutta of Europe but now the water is clean enough, for the time being, to swim and fish in. There's not a city in the U.S. that couldn't benefit from cleaning up their regional water ways. As an example, the Huron River, or any river connected to the Great Lakes, had been used for salmon and trout fishing for literally 1000's of years, prior to industrialization. It or any other river in the U.S., with effort and time, could be usable again.
Likewise with proper sick leave and health care. In the U.S. and many other countries it is difficult or impossible economically to take sick leave. To add damage, it is often considered status to show up sick at work and spread it to others.
To bring this back to topic, it's a variation of "your right to swing your fist ends at my face": your right to go 'round coughing up a lung ends at the point before it could spread to others.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Only 100 people out of 6 billion have died from SARS.
Also World wide infection are easily way less than 10,000.
Meaning the fact is that statistically (taking error rates into account) the world wide rate of SARS is no different than if it never existed.
Even comparing Chinese effection rates to the Chinese population, the stats work out as within the error rate of not existing too.
These things are always blown out of proportion simply by panic merchants, hack journos trying to sell more newspapers, bureaucrats/health officials/polies who expect the world to 100% totally safe to the point that doctors will get sued if someones grany dies before doing a century, & health bureaucrats trying to justify budget increases for their dept.
Singapore president : Indian
Many of the top ministers : Indian and Malay
Human-rights violations are not an issue in Singapore. Please back up your accusations with evidence. Twisting caning (a form of capital punishment which has proved extremely effective) into something worse than it is has been overdone.
There is a good side to this.
SARS is has a mortality high enough that it's serious, and is infectious enough that while it can be controlled, it's a challenge to do so.
It therefore gives WHO, CDC etc. a dry run. Better to find out what's wrong with their epedemic control procedures now rather than if something really nasty pops up later.
The usual annual influenza outbreaks have a mortality of less than 1%, typically 0.1%. The 1918 Influenza Pandemic was a particularly virulent strain that had a mortality rate of somewhere between 1 and 1.5%.
Now we have an extremely contagious disease that has a mortality rate of 5% and it seems to have a preponderance to take out the medical people first and you have a potentially big problem on your hands.
Please take back your statement about SARS being "not particularly more deadly than the flu".
Singapore has a first rate hospital system. Before you ask, yes, I do know. I work there. I also did my medical training and a year's work in Australia so I can compare the health systems.
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The mortality rate in Singapore is likely to be higher than 5% by the time this is over. If everyone *currently* in ICU with SARS dies, that's going to be a mortality rate of close to 10%.
Mind you, amongst the deaths so far in Singapore there's an otherwise healthy 29 year old woman whose only contact was travelling to Hong Kong, a previously very healthy (I knew him) 27 year old doctor and a couple of 50-something year old people (parents of the first index case).
I'm a doctor and I don't like these odds. I agree you shouldn't be running for your mask just yet but if SARS comes to your city, well
btw, surgical masks aren't sufficient, you should get at least N95 certified masks
Those "authorities" actions are just more grist for the comedy mill. Whoohoo! Better to laugh than cry. See our cartoon spoof on SARS, renamed "SALS", severe acute limb syndrome: http://www.officepolitics.com
~ Backstab or kiss-ass to get to the top? www.OfficePolitics.com
Sounds to me like that need to get out the good ole' Singapore whip. 15 slashes ought to make them stay inside.
//m
Perhaps you miss my point, Herr AC, I'm not lauding the benefits of the US, I'm just saying that developed countries have better medical treatment. Not sure on Canada though, mayhap they just got caught with their proverbial pants down.
Hong Kong ain't a country, BTW, it is a provence of China, which I would call Developing. Mayhap the whole Developed/Non was a bad choice of classification, perhaps Medically Apt would have been better.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
As of today, the doubling time of weekley (not cumulative!) deaths from SARS is less than a week in Hong Kong.
Seastead this.