> SARS is for instance more benign than AIDS
hmm. this seems like apples and oranges here.
aids is hard to acquire, but when you do have the virus, you usually won't know it for a long period of time and can infect many people. the death rate within the first months of infection is pretty low, but the overall cost of caring for a patient over the lifetime of the illness can be high.
sars is as easy to catch and spread as a cold. while maybe the economic impact on the healthcare system is higher for aids, over a long period of time, the cost of stamping out an epidemic is different in both cases: the behaviorial changes you need to prevent spread of aids (intimate contact) don't have the same impact on an economy as large scale quarantine, closing of schools and plants, and general fear of casual contact.
