It is also possible that the severe first epidemic wave during the previous winter of 1918 had alarmed the population to being more readily willing to quickly seek medical assistance at the first sign of an ailment, even though many of these illnesses might be unrelated to influenza. That is, the populace was more readily alerted to seek treatment from local public medics with any initial symptom of illness (as compared to visiting large hospital), while patients with more severe illness (of any kind) are more likely to be hospitalized by physicians. This type of overreaction on the part of the healthcare system and the general public had also been observed during the 2003 SARS outbreak where many non-SARS patients were hospitalized unnecessarily as suspected SARS cases. Adding the fact that both the numbers of hospitalizations and treatments by the public medics dropped drastically next year in 1920, the last scenario seems plausible. Another possibility is that pathophysiological or social processes [18] may be at play where the end of World War I could have contributed to movement of people and affected the pandemic's spread, although the Taiwan data indicated no noticeable increase in migration,.