The SARS outbreak of 2002-4
was caused by a Coronavirus more deadly than Covid-19, with a case-fatality ratio of 11% over
its total positive-tested cases of 8,422. Covid-19 has a known case-fatality ratio of 2.2% as of January 27, 2021.
And yet, despite SARS spreading throughout the entire world from 2002-2004, and being found in just about every country
at one point or another during that time, the disease killed a fraction of the people that have been killed in the Covid-19 pandemic.
The reason for that is simple - the response.
What was different in 2003 was that there was responsible leadership in the United States CDC and others,
who acted to quell panic,
and only took steps to keep those with the worst form of illness from reaching the rest
of the population, through travel restrictions, etc.
This kept the majority of the population living normal lives, so that when they inevitably caught a descendant of
the original SARS infection, it had been super-spread, and evolved into a virus thousands of
Virus-Years away from
the original strain - which was an ordinary common cold. We all got SARS that year, but didn't know it,
in part because of less hysteria generated by mass testing.
Compare this to the Covid-19 response, where the populations were terrorized by mass testing,
and many countries were effective in keeping their populations from living normal lives,
keeping the prevailing common cold infections as close as possible to the original virus outbreak that was so feared,
and ultimately making sure that as many people as possible got the worst form of the Coronavirus.
This has led to more deaths around the world, except in those countries whose populations kept as close to
a normal life as possible, such as in Bangladesh,
and even in China, where once the asymtomatic Covid-19 strain was
the predominant infection, their lockdowns were immediately lifted, followed by the reopening of tourist sites,
and the encouragement to travel domestically.
Our living normal lives, and acting as a healthy animal population, leads to fewer deaths due to airborne disease,
and that has now been proven in data from Covid-19, as well as every disease in our history.
