Some Monday morning links:

Worried about SARS? You should be reading the WHO website. On there you can read the latest press briefing and have straight answers like:

• It has around a 4% fatality rate – to put that in context, influenza has around 5-30% fatality rate, depending on a wide range of factors.
• As far as the WHO can tell, the infection is passed through close contact only, with a possible environmental factor in Hong Kong, most likely to do with the close living conditions. In fact, it appears to be passed mainly through bodily fluid contact.
• Transmission has been highest amongst health care professionals.

It’s certainly one of those things that I would expect risk management professionals to be able to make reasonable judgements about it. That is, that quarantining people from work who do not present any symptoms and who have not come into contact with any likely cases may be slight overkill.

Also in the stupidity-of-humanity department today, we have the annual Jefferson Muzzle Awards for the suppression of free speech, and the Privacy International Stupid Security Awards. They make for truly scary reading about the paranoia raging through the US.

Edit: One thing I forgot to mention: The Australian Government got the ‘Most Egregiously Stupid’ award for the ‘alert but not alarmed’ pile of steaming crap.