Quotes About SARS

In 2003 a new coronavirus that causes SARS, "severe acute respiratory syndrome," appeared in China and quickly spread around the world. Coronaviruses cause an estimated 15 to 30 percent of all colds and, like the influenza virus, infect epithelial cells. When the coronavirus that causes SARS does kill, it often kills through ARDS, although since the virus replicates much more slowly than influenza, death from ARDS can come several weeks after the first symptoms.)

Influenza could not have been contained as SARS was—influenza is far more contagious.

In most life forms, genes are stretched out along the length of a filament-like molecule of DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid. But many viruses—including influenza, HIV, and the coronavirus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome)—encode their genes in RNA, ribonucleic acid, an even simpler but less stable molecule.