Talk:SARS

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Older discussions are in talk:Severe acute respiratory syndrome/archive 1

Something should be done to the "progress of the outbreak" section. Its current size is ok, but at some point (a couple of months from now) we have to either

  • start deleting older, not-so-relevant-stuff (a bad choice)
  • move the section into its own article or
  • let it bloat into a huge list containing hundreds of small events.

Any ideas before this becomes a problem? --Card 16:05 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

I'd take option#2 - create Timeline of SARS outbreak -- kt2

Yes, that makes sense. More tables and plots would be nice, too, e.g. cumulative cases over time. --Eloquence 02:17 Apr 11, 2003 (UTC)
Better would be SARS timeline
Now that Progress of the SARS outbreak has its own article, shouldn't the duplicate material on the SARS page be removed? -- 241

Racial effects

Since no one replied to my request to furnish evidence to substantiate claims of racial effects of the SARS outbreak, I changed the title of the section. I also added a published source who has questioned these claims, since quotable sources were requested. I am taking a Popperian approach here. The null hypothesis is that there are no racial effects of SARS, and to demonstrate that there are such effects we just need some evidence that disproves this null hypothesis. This approach gives us the opportunity to establish with certainty that racism exists. Jfitzg

Although I do prefer the new title and don't have particular objections to the recent edits about race, there are two points to be made here:

  1. Taking a "Popperian approach" is not always acceptable on Wikipedia. There there is far from universal agreement that the only things worth saying are A) not yet falsified by evidence but still B) falsifiable in principle. In addition, people may have different views about what is/isn't falsifiable, and the sorts of evidence that would be relevant for falsification. In light of this, the NPOV policy strongly suggests that being "Popperian" is not a blanket, unproblematic justification for one's edits.
I'm going to be rude and interrupt your comment, becuase the points you make are important (as are everyone's here) and I think it aids clarity to respond to them immediately rather than in some later compendious reply. Anyway, as I have argued below, the hypothesis that SARS has led to racial discrimination is utterly without empirical support. After weeks of these accusations I think it is only reasonable to ask that people who claim that there have been such effects provide some evidence of them. Yes, the hypothesis remains falsifiable; that's the point. It remains falsifiable, but the believers in racial effects of SARS refuse even to try to falsify it (except by fabricating "racial jokes" that were never told). I added the bit about racial slurs and expanded on the quotation from Min Tat Cheung, by the way.Jfitzg
  1. There is no universally acceptable, a priori reason to take "no racial effects" as the null hypothesis, instead of taking, say, "some racial effects", or even "lots of racial effects", as the null hypothesis. You could argue one way or the other based on what seems intuitively plausible, or based on if it's worse to A) say there's racism when there isn't or B) say there isn't racism when there is. But no matter which one you pick, people will disagree with you.
The a priori reason is that the "no effects" hypothesis is falsifiable, and the others not. A non-falsifiable hypothesis does not enable us to reduce uncertainty. No one wants to offer any evidence, anyway. Jfitzg

Again, I'm not currently suggesting any particular changes. I'm just suggesting matters are murkier than they first appear.

--Ryguasu 22:45 Apr 11, 2003 (UTC)

Just my two bits, I don't want to get into this Popperian stuff, or the state null hypothesis, prove otherwise method, because I don't know much about it. Although I do think some of the things that someone recently added, like the fact that Jean Chretien went to a Chinese restaurant, and that "it is close to election" are petty things, which don't really make it any stronger. I mean, wikipedia were actually trying to prove one side or the other, these would be moot points. Wikipedia is NPOV, so it argues for both sides...it which case they are still moot, petty points. I am biased because I personally don't like hearing about the stupid little things that politicians do, and then includes when Chretien invites people to a chinese restaurant, as if he needed to prove he wasn't racist. dave 15:56 Apr 12, 2003 (UTC)
I took out the reference to racial jokes in the media scrum, because I didn't hear any, and I heard the exchange in question several times. If racial jokes were made, quote them in the piece. As for Wikipedia not having a point of view, that is irrelevant. The accusations are just plain wrong. They are demonstrably wrong. They are false. Some of them -- like the story of the racial jokes in the scrum -- are manufactured. I am sure Wikipedia does not countenance printing falsehood simply because it's someone's point of view. What if someone decided to blame the Jews for SARS? That's a point of view. Jfitzg

I don't want to edit the totals, because I realize there is a system in place here. but the totals in this news story [1] and in this wiki-article do not align. Kingturtle 03:55 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)


Turtle, don't worry, just fix it yourself next time. This is a high traffic article anyways, if you typed in 14 by accident or if they news changed tomorrow, it would be fixed. dave 06:08 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

Sorry to bring this up again, and I appreciate those who update the totals, but the current totals are confusing -- does the China entry represent a sum of numbers in the mainland plus those from Hong Kong and Taiwan?

By the way, there is lots of talk in Taipei Times and elsewhere about Taiwan, WHO, SARS and China. Anyone willing to write it up?

Kaihsu 18:20 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

The China entry does not represent a total. The "problem" is that the WHO classifies Hong Kong and Taiwan as regions of China and alphabetizes them on the list as if they began with "C". I've yet to find some way to name these regions without stepping on someone's toes. There was some discussion of this here. -◈¡◈

I don't like the alphabetical order of the external links. I think it should be arranged in the reversed order of significance. I would put WHO website first, CDC's next (due to their authority in the medical field, then Hong Kong's, Canada's and then Taiwan based on number of cases affecting the countries. Just my two cents.

User:Kowloonese 23:08 Apr 14, 2003 (PDT)

Rewrote section on China. IMHO the CNN article was a very bad summary of what was actually said at the press conference. If you go to www.xinhua.org, you see this page on SARS

http://news.xinhuanet.com/ziliao/2003-04/15/content_832545.htm

and even if you can't read Chinese there is enough there to make it clear that the official media is no longer an official blackout on the story. One of the links on the page is a transcript of the press conference covered by CNN, and IMHO the CNN story was quite a bad summary of what the Chinese officials actually said.

Here is a link to the press conference that CNN covered.

http://www.xinhuanet.com/zhibo/20030410/zhibo.htm

Changed the paragraph to describe exactly what China did and remove speculation about why China did it. My experience has been that most speculation on why Chinese officials do certain things tends to be extremely uninformed.

--- User:Roadrunner

I haven't kept track of who keeps doing it, but frequently the Western criticism about China suppressing news of the outbreak gets deleted from the article.

It's actually me. User:Roadrunner

Why would anyone want to omit from the article the fact that people outside China accused the regime of a cover-up?

Changed the wording some more. The way that it was worded makes is read like it has been established that Chinese officials were intentionally covering up information about SARS.
The problem is that the wording misrepresents the Chinese governments position on what happened. I don't have any objections to a charge that the Chinese government has had a coverup provided that there an an accurate statement of what the Chinese governments response is. Thus far, the allegations have completely misrepresented the Chinese governments response to charges of a coverup.
The other point is that the paragraph makes is sound like that Chinese government *still* is surpressing information about SARS, when that is clearly not the case if you the Chinese media. It's been the top story for the past several days.

This encyclopedia isn't endorsing those charges -- merely reporting them. Moreover, if a delay in reporting the outbreak within China itself turns out to have aided the spread of the disease, I think this would be a significant revelation.

Apparently China has both (A) denied covering up the outbreak and (B) apologized for not telling people about it....

--Uncle Ed 18:59 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

The position of the Chinese government is that they mishandled the early stages of the disease, but they are trying to do the right thing now.

Thanks for clearing that up, Roadrunner. Perhaps we need a subsection (or separate article) on the cover-up issue.

Near as I can recall, what happened was this:

  • the West found out about SARS when someone in Hong Kong showed up with the disease early this year. Within about a month, two things happened. Experts traced the disease back to China's Guangdong province, and China officially reported the outbreak to the WHO.
  • Next, some in the West began complaining that China had been "suppressing" news of the outbreak. They even started suggesting that this alleged "cover up" had aided the spread of the disease and blaming China for this.
  • In the last week or so, China began to admit that it had been, um, slow (?) in revealing/reporting the outbreak.

Are we pretty much agreed on my three-point summary? I don't want to have an edit war. It's better to hash it out on the talk page, and then edit cooperatively. --Uncle Ed 19:41 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

The problem I have with that summary is that it doesn't name exactly alleging a cover-up late last year (meaning that officials knew that they had a problem and intentionally surpressed information about the news). The Reuter articles is not a sufficient source for this since it is just repeating boiler plate. There is a good Washington Post article about this, but all they are accusing the Chinese government of is bureaucratic inertia and rear end covering. They problem here is that unless one is careful one ends up playing a game of telegraph where an original report of bureaucratic inertia becomes a full scale cover-up.

Now there *has* been an accusation that the PRC is covering up cases in military hospitals Beijing, but that is a different issue.

-- User:Roadrunner

Changed the paragraph. There probably wasn't a coverup in Guangzhou, but it appears now that there was a coverup in Beijing.

-- User:Roadrunner

Regarding SARS in Hong Kong,

A poem from all H K Citizens : 

Congratulations, Mr. Tung Chee-hwa,
What a year you've had so far
Things have certainly been bizarre
Starting with Antony Leung's new car
And now we even have a disease named after the HKSAR.

Oh Mr. Tung, please bring back our glorious past
When property and stocks would rise far and fast
And everyone was having such a blast
Now we're just wondering if you're up to the task
And asking when can we take off this stupid mask.

Here is a long list of external links on SARS, some may be useful for this article.

HONG KONG SITES

OTHER SITES

Chinese sites

Taiwan sites

others

JOURNALS

That post above is cluttering the talk page...delete it? move it? fix the ugly <a href= crap? I suggest the original poster should fix the hyperlinks for us.

The WHO is clearly backlogged and they can't verify the deaths to be SARS-related quickly enough. You'd think the the ministry of health in ontario would be quicker. They report 16 deaths (1 is a half-death, the lady caught it in canada and then went to the phillipines and died). All the updates are available here: http://www.health.gov.on.ca

So please don't blindly alter the Canadian death toll and make it lower. If I set it to 13, or 14, or 16, or whatever, it's because I've heard it from the Ontario ministry of health. dave

Is there a graph that plots the number of cases against the time line? user:kowloonese

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