sars

SARs stands for Severe acute respiratory syndrome. Despite massive media attention and hype, SARs has only infected 8042 people to date and only 772 of them have resulted in death (therefore having a mortality rate of 9.6%) The symptoms of SARs are flu like and death is caused by respiratory failure. The human body can actually normally fight off the disease if breathing support is given, however as the disease was first discovered in Southern Asia, lack of understanding and medical care was what caused the majority of the deaths. Despite SARs disappearing and causing very few deaths, the short media induced panic damaged the tourist trade of many Southern Asian countries significantly.