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     After talking about vaccine in the class, I memorized the horrible year, 2003. It was 12 years ago, a virus called “SARS” spread around the world, nearly 10 thousand people were infected. More than 30 countries suffered from this outbreak. In China, the virus originated place, all the schools are closed for students’ safety. People took temperature everyday before they start work.Person who once found have a slight fever will be isolated immediately. A lot of medical works even sacrificed their lives. Through my personal experience, I know how tough it was for everyone to struggle against the virus and the fear for virus. SARS may be the eternal pain in many people’s heart.

      So, what is SARS? Why it is so powerful? “SARS is severe acute respiratory syndrome, a viral respiratory disease of zoonotic origin caused by the SARS coronavirus.” It is so special that scientists never found it before, which cause a great panic not only among patients but also doctors. No one knows what it is and what to do at first. But at the same time the virus spread in an alarming rate. It can be transmitted close person-to-person contact via droplets or skin touch. The initial symptoms of infection are similar to cold and fever, including shortness of breath and chills, sore throat and body aches. And then lead to more serious illness like disseminated intravascular coagulation, pneumonia. In a very short time, 60% of patients who infected by SARS virus will face death.

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Although some fortunate people survive from this disaster, their lives never be the same as before. Most of them who suffered from a double blow (mentally and physically) are found had kind of Sequelae of SARS. The most typical three dieases are depression, ONFH(Osteonecrosis of the Femeral Head) and lung cancer. These sequelaes are triggered by hormone drugs which were used to save lives. But too much hormone drugs brings more problems after patients are cured. Because nobody know how to treat SARS, hormone drugs are not used in a scientific way although the purpose is to save people’s lives. It is a soft end point , but we can still see how scientific method matters. Maybe after 12 years, doctors and scientists can find a better and more scientific way to cure people which would not bring such serious consequence

Some diseases like Smallpox and Polio we talked in the class can be cured and stopped by vaccine. No vaccine is found available for SARS virus according to World Health Organization. This webpage is updated in 2013 which means even after 10 years, the vaccine can not be found. And WHO encouraged every country to take an active part in the development and evaluation of SARS vaccines. It is very important to avoid such terrible disaster happen again.

If you want to learn more about SARS: