A few weeks back it could only live for an hour or two on inanimate objects, and a couple of weeks from now they will be saying that it can live for a week... Until they really get a grip on it, I say treat every statement about limits on infectiousness as minimums rather than maximums.

For anyone who cares, I ended up letting my packages sit for over a week and then doused the carboard boxes with lysol, opened them with gloves and then wiped down the shrink-wrap with alcohol soaked paper towels. Might sound extreme, but it only took five minutes (other than ignoring the packages on my deck for a week).

One of the regulars on a car forum I frequent has got SARS, he "disappeared" from the community back in *January* - before anyone outside of China even suspected a major problem. He's still in the hospital (back home in Australia) and we wouldn't have known except a relative posted using his account to tell us all what was going on.

So now all you guys are at least two degrees away from a SARS victim, if not closer.

I want to thank trigger and cultshock for the information they provided. I received an order of 20 dvds from dvdshelf last week and today I got a bill from UPS for $5.95 Tariff and $5 Disbursement Fee. The tariff rate is 2.7% and the Duty Class/Description says 8524.39.8000/Ad Valor DVD. Do you think I can still argue with them that DVDs should fall under the 8524.39.4000 Class? Trigger, do you mind telling me your experience negotiating with UPS? Thanks again.