Why did SARS disappear without spreading further?
In: Biology
SARS could only be contagious once people were showing symptoms, so when people were ill, they were quarantined immidately. This stopped the spread. Also SARS was very deadly and killed a lot of people before they could infect many more.
There is a Netflix documentary (just one episode at the moment) which tells you exactly why. Higher the mortality rate of a virus, harder it is for it to spread. And like one of the above answers said, it does not spread during incubation period so it was relatively easier to quarantine people who finally showed symptoms.
As above, you could quarantine people one symptoms were exhibited and contact trace back. It was very easy to spot SARs early on because people got really sick really fast, this also limits spread because most people wouldn’t socialise while feeling as poorly as SARs made people.
Unlike covid-19 where it appears to be infectious before symptoms and symptoms build slowly so you don’t feel any more poorly than the common cold when infectious.
However also because it had a very high death rate, people took it more seriously and acted promptly. Lots of countries who have taken Covid-19 seriously are managing to contain it the way SARs was contained. So it’s partly political choices.
SARS wasn’t as contagious as other diseases and it developed symptoms quite early (and I think it did not cause people to be contagious during the incubation time) which means that all you had to do to stop it is quarantine people that exhibit symptoms.
SARS was far less contagious and also you could not transmit the virus until you showed symptoms.
Therefore you could much more easily contain the spread by isolating people with symptoms and you could more easily track down people who were exposed to the virus and potentially isolate them before they ever got a chance to transmit it.
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