Hi Everyone,
With the Coronavirus on many lips these days, plus FB feeds (I received one today from an Italian police officer friend and, believe me, the situation - morale - is not good), I thought I'd share my 2002 SARS experience with you.
It's interesting in terms of what the very initial stages are PRIOR to ramping up. Now...if you plan to write something back of an inflammatory nature, just don't. This is serious business and I simply want to share, here, what the effort was, what it took and where it went from there. It didn't happen over night, as some would like it to happen.
SARS: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. We were challenged twice by this virus: 2002 & 2004. It is highly contagious and is caused by the SARS Coronavirus known as SARS CoV. It originated in China. The 2004 outbreak was linked to a medical lab in China, where it was thought that a tech may have actually have had manual exposure to the virus. In 2002, there were 8,098 reported cases and 774 deaths. The pneumonia resulting from SARS is most difficult to treat.
In 2002, I worked in research for a branch of the military. As you can imagine, with such a population of military personnel stationed around the world, it was imperative of the branch for which I worked to establish an immediate clinical approach to the SARS virus. To that end, the Head of Infectious Diseases at our Command, the largest medical command in our particular branch of the service, was tasked to develop a "Response." This Response was all-inclusive and extremely comprehensive.
One Monday, as I sat at my desk, I received a call from our department head to come to his office immediately. I was introduced to Dr. X, the Head of Infectious Diseases, with whom I already had a relationship, as we sat on the IRB together. My department head then advised me that I was chosen to work hand-in-hand with Dr. X in developing the SARS protocol. In this case, the word "protocol" was used to mean not only the plan, but a means to define all which applied to the SARS virus within the context of our war against this microbe.
Dr. X. and I were given an office with one desk and one computer and 2 chairs. We closed the door and started work. Thank God my background was in hard science, as I was actually able to be of help and not just a "secretary." Dr. X. roughed out outline after outline, until he was satisfied. Then we began the grueling work of defining, setting goals, funding, research (where & how), methods of reaching all of our military and so on. We worked 10-12 hour days and were able to accomplish so much, because we were not bogged down by a committees!
When we had completed the protocol, Dr. X. walked it up to our Admiral for a brief review, as it was truly on its way to the Pentagon for review, modification, re-write and action.
How long did this take? We began that Monday afternoon and printed the tome of a protocol at 1900HRS on Thursday, ~35+ hours later, clearly a miracle in my book.
So, how did things go at Command where I worked? We did, unfortunately, admit several patients infected with SARS, all of whom survived. And, I must credit this success to Dr. X., who is now a world renowned physician in his field.
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