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American Morning
Talk with Dr. Anthony Fauci
Aired April 25, 2003 - 07:34 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: There are some 39 probable cases of SARS here in the U.S. That's according to the Centers for Disease Control. No deaths from the flu like illness have been reported in the U.S., but there is no way to measure precisely the anxiety Americans are feeling about a potential SARS outbreak.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is the nation's point man on infectious diseases.
Just a bit earlier, I asked him whether the U.S. health care system is prepared to deal with an outbreak of SARS in this country.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY & INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Well, it depends on what you mean by an outbreak of SARS. If you're talking about tens of thousands of acutely ill patients, I think no health care system is ready for that. Rather than focus on the health care system, I think if you look at the public health apparatus that's addressing this evolving epidemic worldwide and the kinds of things that we're doing in this country that I believe are, in fact, part of the reason why we're doing well, relatively speaking, in the sense of relatively few cases.
We still have to take it very, very seriously because this is an evolving epidemic. But the kinds of public health measures that have been put in place, the daily briefings, the information flow about the kinds of things to do and not do, the travel alerts, that's been very helpful in keeping the lid on the epidemic thus far in this country.
COLLINS: Now, it might be just a little bit of luck, but I'm wondering why do you think that we haven't seen any deaths in the U.S. from SARS yet?
FAUCI: Well, the number of probable cases of SARS in our country now is only 39. So that number is low enough that you can't really make a statistical analysis and comparison of whether our death rate is significantly lower than the death rate, for example, in another country that has thousands of cases. It's just too early to say that.
The other possibility is that the health care system is such here that people get very, very good care. I wouldn't want to say that we're significantly better, for example, than Canada, but that could play into the fact that we don't have any deaths thus far.
But I think fundamentally it's just that the numbers of probable cases are so low. COLLINS: Why do some people who contract the virus get deathly ill and then others only show mild symptoms?
FAUCI: Well, that is classical for infectious diseases that are serious diseases. If you look at any infectious diseases that can ultimately lead to the death of individuals, there's a biological variability. In some cases it's almost like a bell shaped curve, where most of the people will do reasonably well, would get sick, but not seriously, and a small percentage of the people would do terribly and, in fact, could succumb to the infection, and another small percentage of the people might not have any symptoms at all.
So the shape of that curve varies. But to have that degree of biological variability is not at all unusual in infectious diseases.
COLLINS: There's a professor at Johns Hopkins University who said something very interesting in the "Wall Street Journal" this morning. He's suggesting that it might be possible that SARS has sort of a seasonal pattern, that in the summer it might die down a little bit, but then come fall and winter it will explode again.
Do you think there's any credence in that?
FAUCI: Oh, yes, absolutely. In fact, that is the pattern of respiratory borne diseases and we're not exactly sure what the reason for that is. There are some reasonable assumptions of why that may be the case. But we see situations where you will get spread of a disease, of a respiratory borne illness in the winter months, for example, when people are cooped up, when they're inside more, as opposed to in the summer, where you have most of the people on the outside, there are weather differences and things like that.
So the idea about seasonal variations is not at all unusual. In fact, influenza, another very important disease, is clearly seasonally related, and that's the reason why when we give vaccinations or immunizations for influenza, we generally, in this country, give them in October and November in preparation for the flu season, which usually goes December, January, February and early March.
So that's classical infectious diseases. We don't know whether this is going to happen with the SARS virus, but I would not be surprised if that's the case.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: Dr. Fauci also told us that containing the virus will largely depend on many things, two of which are good public health education and alertness. Also, if you get sick, you have to go to the doctor. I mean you really have to listen to your body.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired April 25, 2003 - 07:34 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: There are some 39 probable cases of SARS here in the U.S. That's according to the Centers for Disease Control. No deaths from the flu like illness have been reported in the U.S., but there is no way to measure precisely the anxiety Americans are feeling about a potential SARS outbreak.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is the nation's point man on infectious diseases.
Just a bit earlier, I asked him whether the U.S. health care system is prepared to deal with an outbreak of SARS in this country.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY & INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Well, it depends on what you mean by an outbreak of SARS. If you're talking about tens of thousands of acutely ill patients, I think no health care system is ready for that. Rather than focus on the health care system, I think if you look at the public health apparatus that's addressing this evolving epidemic worldwide and the kinds of things that we're doing in this country that I believe are, in fact, part of the reason why we're doing well, relatively speaking, in the sense of relatively few cases.
We still have to take it very, very seriously because this is an evolving epidemic. But the kinds of public health measures that have been put in place, the daily briefings, the information flow about the kinds of things to do and not do, the travel alerts, that's been very helpful in keeping the lid on the epidemic thus far in this country.
COLLINS: Now, it might be just a little bit of luck, but I'm wondering why do you think that we haven't seen any deaths in the U.S. from SARS yet?
FAUCI: Well, the number of probable cases of SARS in our country now is only 39. So that number is low enough that you can't really make a statistical analysis and comparison of whether our death rate is significantly lower than the death rate, for example, in another country that has thousands of cases. It's just too early to say that.
The other possibility is that the health care system is such here that people get very, very good care. I wouldn't want to say that we're significantly better, for example, than Canada, but that could play into the fact that we don't have any deaths thus far.
But I think fundamentally it's just that the numbers of probable cases are so low. COLLINS: Why do some people who contract the virus get deathly ill and then others only show mild symptoms?
FAUCI: Well, that is classical for infectious diseases that are serious diseases. If you look at any infectious diseases that can ultimately lead to the death of individuals, there's a biological variability. In some cases it's almost like a bell shaped curve, where most of the people will do reasonably well, would get sick, but not seriously, and a small percentage of the people would do terribly and, in fact, could succumb to the infection, and another small percentage of the people might not have any symptoms at all.
So the shape of that curve varies. But to have that degree of biological variability is not at all unusual in infectious diseases.
COLLINS: There's a professor at Johns Hopkins University who said something very interesting in the "Wall Street Journal" this morning. He's suggesting that it might be possible that SARS has sort of a seasonal pattern, that in the summer it might die down a little bit, but then come fall and winter it will explode again.
Do you think there's any credence in that?
FAUCI: Oh, yes, absolutely. In fact, that is the pattern of respiratory borne diseases and we're not exactly sure what the reason for that is. There are some reasonable assumptions of why that may be the case. But we see situations where you will get spread of a disease, of a respiratory borne illness in the winter months, for example, when people are cooped up, when they're inside more, as opposed to in the summer, where you have most of the people on the outside, there are weather differences and things like that.
So the idea about seasonal variations is not at all unusual. In fact, influenza, another very important disease, is clearly seasonally related, and that's the reason why when we give vaccinations or immunizations for influenza, we generally, in this country, give them in October and November in preparation for the flu season, which usually goes December, January, February and early March.
So that's classical infectious diseases. We don't know whether this is going to happen with the SARS virus, but I would not be surprised if that's the case.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: Dr. Fauci also told us that containing the virus will largely depend on many things, two of which are good public health education and alertness. Also, if you get sick, you have to go to the doctor. I mean you really have to listen to your body.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
