SARS: Our Canadian government is too slow to act
 

It looks like this epidemic may spread out of control. The mortality rate is somewhere between 4% to 10%. Meanwhile our Canadian government is doing what it does best... nothing.

Some sensible steps to combat the SARS epidemic would be:

1. Immediately invest 100 million dollars and recruit top researchers to develop a preventative vaccine and/or antiviral medication.

2. Ban travel to countries affected by SARS. Quarantine anyone returning from those countries for 14 days.

3. Commence a public education campaign so people will recognize the symptoms of SARS and know where to go for diagnosis and treatment.

4. Dedicate one hospital in each major urban area as a SARS centre, to avoid cross-infection of other patients and staff.

Unfortunately our government is dropping the ball on this one. I am not impressed with our government's inaction when the lives of my family may be put at risk.

i'm not worried, better to alive now than in middle ages, or in the BC time period, bring on SARS i'll still die happy :) i'm easily pleased

Don't you think this is being blown way out of proportion to how many people have actually died from sars?

As it's been said in the paper and on the news many more things in our society cause many more deaths each year than sar's is!

In Calgary for example last week 4 nun's died from a trucker and hundreds more die each year from truck accidents because of their crappy regulation's on truckers(or lack their of)

i agree. even in TO, chances of dying from SARS are still slimmer than being murdered (according to the national post). and although TO has a fairly high homocide rate, no one ever calls that an epidemic.

Exactally my point Quinn!

Like in the movie "bowling for Colimbine" No one in worries about the pollution in LA that probally kills 1000's of people every year from diesese but the do worry alot more about the killing. "How come I can't see the HOLLYWOOD sign?" Oh theres too much pollution!

I agree that the public hysteria is out of proportion. For the moment I don't think the average person has to worry about SARS.

However if the contagion continues to spread we could be in trouble. Our government needs to take some steps to prevent this from happening.

The "nothing to worry about" attitude was what caused the virus to spread rampantly through China where it is now out of control.

i do agree that steps should be taken. however i don't think a major financial effort on the part of the government is required. certainly i would be carefully screening any travellers coming from out of the country, possibly banning travel to asia.