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I was watching a video https://youtu.be/XUK7ORYBgIs?t=235 until a Japanese vlogger stumbled on reading the phrase:

SARS様ウィルス

The phrase itself seems pretty widespread and even Wikipedia mentions it https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%87%8D%E7%97%87%E6%80%A5%E6%80%A7%E5%91%BC%E5%90%B8%E5%99%A8%E7%97%87%E5%80%99%E7%BE%A4

If I encountered this, I would go with よう not さま.

What is the correct reading?

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  • 4
    I was surprised to see a celebrity like him could not read it even after thinking about it for a while...
    – naruto
    Commented Mar 2, 2020 at 16:02

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A YouTube comment on the video with 42 thumbs-up says:

様(よう)
「〜のような」
例:風邪様症状「風邪のような症状」

Then I looked for "風邪様" 読み方 on Google and found this Yahoo Q&A

Q: 「風邪様」症状の読み方を教えてください。

A: 「かぜよう」＝風邪のような。風邪に似たの意です。

So this kind of “disease suffix 様” seems to be generally read as よう (which also makes a lot more sense to me at least :)).

Oh, and jisho.org lists:

enter image description here

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  • So is standalone 様 specific to diseases? Or does it have general use?
    – szczupaczek
    Commented Mar 2, 2020 at 18:35
  • I very strongly assume that it isn't limited to diseases.
    – lynn
    Commented Mar 2, 2020 at 23:45
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    @szczupaczek It's not restricted to medicine. Although less frequent than 型 and 風, it can be used in other academic contexts, e.g., 縄文【じょうもん】様【よう】土器【どき】 (Jomon-like pottery), S字様【じよう】曲線 (sigmoid curve). (Maybe it's like English "-oid" which tends to appear in medical contexts?)
    – naruto
    Commented Mar 3, 2020 at 2:17

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