Red Wine,
I, too, think we are getting much hype about SARS, but the facts are scarey. SARS kills about 6% of all who catch it, as opposed to a bare fraction of that for flu. In fact, SARS kills young healthy people, even when they are in the hospital, hooked up to the latest support systems.
If SARS were to sweep the US, and 10% of the population caught it (common number for flu) and 6% of those who caught it died, there would be 1.5 million deaths! This last occurred in an outbreak in 1919, which did cause such numbers.