So, are you more likely to die from an Influenza Pandemic or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome?? Maybe it will be an Asteriod Impact?? Either way, the UK is now (22nd April 2003) classified as an SARS-affected area ( http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=2604787 )

Symptoms and progression:

• Incubation period between 2 and 12 days (usually 2 to 7)
• Onset: Fever, " which is often high, sometimes associated with chills and rigors and sometimes accompanied by other symptoms including headache, malaise, and myalgias. At the onset of illness, some cases have mild respiratory symptoms. Typically, rash and neurologic or gastrointestinal findings are absent, although a few patients have reported diarrhoea during the febrile prodrome."
• 3\x967 days: "onset of a dry, non- productive cough or dyspnea", in 10%-20% of cases, this is severe enough to require assisted breathing
• "At present, the most efficacious treatment regime, if any is unknown."
• Death rate: 3%

[Summarised from http://www.paho.org/english/ad/dpc/cd/sars_info.htm ]

Distribution

• WHO have maps of the number of cases by country - You can find other maps by URL guessing, but some of them are .gif files
• The latest map is available from http://www.who.int/csr/sars/en/

FAQs

• UK SARS FAQ - http://www.phls.co.uk/topics_az/SARS/FAQs.htm