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Meet Ibrahim

I wrote this message at the dormatary today is thursday and I got up at 8.00I prepared my books to goto the school I live in a dormatary here while I was goin out I saw my room mate in the canteen and he has breakfeast .he said come and have breakfeast .then I went .while we were watching news on tv a new interested me this new is in china .there is a virus there . nobodyknows what is it?and 64 people died until this day .there is a doctor in these died people .I was very sad about this .may your life be speared for chinese people .I hope it will block someone for also I want to explain something about my life.I am astudent in bolu at universtiy but my family in manisa /akhisar I stay a dormatary . I have got 6 friends in room I love them very much .their names serhat, muhammet,özkan,nazIm,fatih,emre .they are my best friend in bolu . now I must gosee you .Iwant a thing someone who is in chine now . I dont know this virus .can you explain it me thanks alot

07 Apr 2003 Maggi replied:

The virus is called SARS for short and started in China and went to Hong Kong and has now spread to 68 countries so far. People travel. The people who have it get a type of pnemonia...a lung disease that makes it hard to breath. Most people so far don't seem to die from it but many do. I think it is scary for the people in Asia.

Maggi :-)

08 April icon007_1 replied:

SARS has possessed the headline of newspaper for almost two-week long in Taiwan. People who infected SARS were forced to custody in their place by government for three to ten days according different situation. It¡¦s become necessary to know whether people were infected and keep those infected in control. Mask covered the people¡¦s face in most large cities in Asia. WHO warned tourist not to visit danger area (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan etc.) if not necessary. Since the high death rate of SARS, people take it for another AIDS. Scientists still have no methods to fight this awful disease. People, who carry AIDS pathogen, still allow taking bus, airplane and any other mass transportation, however, any cough in public should appall everyone now. Some were prohibited went back homeland just because of their suspicious syndromes. Otherwise, airplane companies also don¡¦t want to carry any of them. Asia countries just in panic and have little to do with. Take care my friends.

08 April Anh replied:

Hi Maggi

Yes, it is very scary to Asian. There are 76 people in Vietnam have SARS and 4 of them was died . We don't travel much these days. Today there was a memory ceremony for an Italian doctor who worked for WHO. He discovered the first patient of SARS in Vietnam, a Chinese American arrived Vietnam via Hongkong. And now both of them , plus two other doctors, were died.

Anh

11 Apr 2003 - Vance Stevens wrote

Thanks Ibrahim for starting us on this discussion of the second most followed news story in the world these days. While traveling recently, I was concerned with getting this disease. I started to get sick in Texas and had a cough by the time I reached Switzerland. I didn't have much energy for skiing when I got there (I went skiing anyway :-) but I decided I'd better get home earlier than planned.

No one seemed too concerned about my cough and I was allowed to travel. I managed to suppress it at customs in Dubai, but by the time I reached home I had a fever ranging from 38-39, which I'm hoping to recover from soon.

Of course I was concerned that this might be SARS, so I read up on it on the plane. The disease is caused by a virus, and as you probably know, viral infections are almost impossible to identify and treat ... I mean, if you get a cold, there is not much you can do other than rest it and take drugs to treat the symptoms. Antibiotics are not effective against viruses and might be prescribed only to prevent secondary infections that might take advantage of a weakened immune system. This particular virus had killed 26 out of 2600 patients who had been hospitalized for it (at the time of the article I was reading), or 1 in 100 of the most acute cases, where patients had been diagnosed as having SARS and had sought treatment.

But there are two other categories of people with SARS. There are carriers of the virus who have no symptoms of the disease but who spread it nevertheless, and there are people with the virus who have milder symptoms and may not seek treatment. In other words, what I have right now (a cold and fever with not much breathing distress) might be caused by the SARS virus or might be caused by some other virus. If the fever goes away soon I'll probably never know, unless someone in my family gets it and must be treated. Apparently this is a highly contageous virus.

On 11 Apr 2003 Roseray Lam wrote:

Hi Vance, I think you'd better go to see a doctor no matter it is simply a cold or whatever. This virus is highly contagious and attacks your lung which causes you hard to breathe. All schools are closed in Hong Kong and an apartment had to be evacuate for disinfection. The families who have their members infected with the virus are put under quarantine. Take care! Rose.

Hi readers, if you are a native speaker of English (or very good at English) please correct the postings you see here and send me an email with the corrected version. I need help with this kind of work. Thanks, Vance



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Last updated: April 10, 2003