Great News! More Doom! (And Gloom!)

Sars-like virus detected | Society | guardian.co.uk

Health experts are trying to identify a new Sars-like virus that is so far known to have infected two people, one of whom is receiving intensive care in a London hospital.

A 49-year-old Qatari man was transported by air ambulance from Doha almost two weeks ago. The other person, a 60-year-old man, died in Saudi Arabia, where the Qatari had recently travelled before falling ill.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) is drawing up advice to help healthcare workers recognise in others the symptoms that occurred in the two men. These include fever, cough, shortness of breath and other breathing difficulties.

It is not clear at present whether the two confirmed cases are typical or the virus could be circulating more widely, but only rarely causing severe illness. John Watson, head of respiratory diseases at the HPA, said: “The HPA is providing advice to healthcare workers to ensure the patient under investigation is being treated appropriately.

“In the light of the severity of the illness that has been identified in the two confirmed cases, immediate steps have been taken to ensure that people who have been in contact with the UK case have not been infected, and there is no evidence to suggest they have.”

They probably wouldn’t tell us even if (or especially if) there was such evidence.

That said, it just seems like one damned thing after another, doesn’t it? Global Islamic warfare, economic collapse, and now the threat of a pandemic.

Asteroid collisions, anybody?