SARS How serious is it really?

[JoeLiyan]

Owen,

 

Great post! Yes, your points are true - though I haven't experienced the hospital, the resturants are especially scary, given even LOCAL health officials will site a resturant in the states for not having a MickyD's (McDonalds) employee wearing gloves to serve fries!!!!

 

I remember touring in Szechwan province to Lan Shan (I may have spelled that wrong) Mountain where bus tours take you on two-three day trips. These tours would stop at outdoor roadside resturants for lunch to break up the trip AND do a little local touring/souvenier buying. The lack of cleanliness, especially when washing chopsticks shocked me - talk about culture shock? Literally washing them under a tap of cold running water that was RECIRCULATED people - (for all the critics on this thread!!! Really shocks me also gentleman! )

 

Moral of Owens' thread: (Micks' comments included) these guys have LIVED there - what evidence they have seen - much more than this poor American in a lifetime - rings true based on my limited observations with likewise limited traveling across throughout China.

 

Beijing could be a hotbead of controversy for the Olympics also folks ...that's going to scare the poop out of Olymic committee persons unless they're convinced definitively there's erradication and sterilization procedures in place for some pre-event competition.

[owenkrout]

Ah, now in all fairness, I have to come to the defense of Beijing. I personally don't care for Beijing and can't even specifically tell you why, but they have undertaken a very major campaign to clean up and modernize the city. I was surprised at how much progress had been made in two years when I visited this summer. Beijing and Shanghai are both in a different catagory than most of China.

 

They have also undertaken a serious campaign to educate people and to stop the littering and spitting. A campaign that seems to be having good effect. Hopefully it will spread to the rest of the country.

[manhattanmoon]

Beijing could be a hotbead of controversy for the Olympics also folks ...that's going to scare the poop out of Olymic committee persons unless they're convinced definitively there's erradication and sterilization procedures in place for some pre-event competition.

Wait a minute! This IS toooooooo much!

I am going to see my sweetie pretty soon and would NOT like her to read through this thread! Believe me, many our love ones in China would NOT feel comfortable reading this here!

[chip_designer]

Owen, have you ever been to Shanghai?

 

My aunt is a doctor at a Shanghai Medical Hospital, and I have visited her, and the facilities and equipment they have there are top notch, even more cleaner and advanced compared to US.

 

On the other hand, if you are talking about a medical clinic in a small town or village. let's say in chengdu, then I would also be suspicious of the state of cleanliness in their facility.

 

I think the major cities in China have at least as good medical facilities

as US have.

 

my 2 cents

[chinadave2001]

HI all. In one of my earlier posts I asked about the risk of travelling to China right now. Someone mentioned "probability" which got me thinking....I know, that can be dangerous!

Anyway, I began to think about the odds-- if the population of China is about 1.4 billion, then 1% of that would be 14 million. 1% of that number would be 140,000, 1% of which is 1400, which is approximately the number infected in mainland China, of which less than 100 have died. So, in other words, we are talking about be the risks of spending prolonged contact with a person on the chance that they might be the 1% of 1% of 1% of the population.

Did I do that right?

Now I recognize that the numbers may be under-reported, but even if they are ten times worse than reported, those are still very long odds. NO?

Dave

[juz]

To be honest, I think some of the replies are little bit over-reacted about owen's post. You can not shoot a guy who just state what he saw, can you?

 

 

From what I read, Owen is a teacher, who do teaching in north-eastern China. Things can get pretty close to what he said.

 

I have no doubt that he has best intention toward Chinese people in his heart. So don't get pissed off. It is just an oberservation and an opinion.

 

Best regards.

[Guest blsqueaky]

Hello Everyone. Lots of you know that I am supposed to be travelling to GZ the end of the month, and I have quite well voiced my concerns and fears to my fiance, and just today I received an email from her stating that it is not as really as bad as is being said. The virus there is under control. I tend to believe her since I know that she would not want any harm to come to me.

 

I remember when her father was hospitalized in December, and it turned out to just be a flu.

 

Right not I am still just a little scared about travelling, but I will trust her right now and still make my plans. I just had to change some reservations so that I was not laid over in Hong Kong for 4 hours, now just layed over in Beijiing for about 5 hours. Darn, with flight time and layover on this flight, 30 hours. I think about time to maybe change again. Oh well

[owenkrout]

Actually, yes, I have been to Shanghai, twice. I have actually done a lot of travel in Eastern China. One could encounter culture shock just in the difference between Shanghai or Hong Kong and the rest of China!

 

Chinadave, you have the basic idea correct for the present situation. The issue is whether they manage to keep it contained. It started to get out of hand in Hong Kong, but they undertook some rather drastic quarentine measures.

 

The proplem is the potential and the governments initial refusal to even acknowledge that the disease existed. Now that the world has forced attention on the issue, it may result in proper measures being taken to check it.

[beishan4]

Aloha from Beijing,

Currently, the problem is the possible expansion of SARS. The odds

of dying from this disease are small but do you want to be the next

fatal case? When I get home on monday I will be in a two week

quarantine.

 

If there are any questions about sanitation, or lack of, in China just

visit a public toilet. The smell will remove all doubt. Places like KFC

and McDonald's have clean wash rooms.

 

Myles aka Annakuen'GG

[tonado]

Airlines offer masks to passengers fearing SARS

By Peter Henderson, Reuters 04/03/03

 

 

LOS ANGELES -- Airlines are beginning to offer surgical masks on flights from Asia to passengers who want to protect themselves from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, the mysterious illness known as SARS, companies said Thursday.

 

Masks have already cropped up from the streets of Hong Kong to the Pearson airport in Toronto and other cities where the pneumonia-like illness has surfaced, killing dozens worldwide and infecting thousands.

 

UAL Corp.'s United Airlines began Wednesday night offering masks to passengers departing from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, spokesman Juan Carlos Cruz said. Passengers can pick up the masks at ticket counters.

 

Singapore Airlines Ltd. also said Thursday it would start offering masks to passengers and crews on flights from Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Hong Kong, as well as cities in Vietnam and Taiwan, and on April 1 Korean Air Co. began giving them out on southern Asian flights.

 

Thai Airways International Inc. helped start the trend by offering masks mid-March, and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. began about a week ago, spokeswoman Mary Jersin-Shammas said, adding, "Many passengers are requesting them."

 

Airlines, already staggering from the slowdowns in traffic following the Sept. 11, 2001 hijacking attacks and the Iraq war, have been hit again by the spread of SARS, which spilled onto U.S. television screens this week when an American Airlines flight from Tokyo was quarantined due to a SARS scare that turned out to be a false alarm.

 

American, which only serves Tokyo in Asia directly from North America, keeps masks in medical kits but does not offer them routinely to passengers, a spokeswoman said.

 

HEALTHY DON'T NEED MASKS -- OFFICIALS

 

In fact, officials studying the new illness do not recommend all passengers on international flights wear masks.

 

"We don't think it would be helpful at all. Why? Because one; it's not very feasible, two; it would alarm people to a great extent, beyond what is reasonable for the danger associated with this disease," said Dr. Max Hardiman of the World Health Organization at a March 27 news conference.

 

WHO doctors said the best course was to give a mask to sick passengers, who might be able to infect those in close contact, or within a couple of rows on an airplane.

 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control also has recommended against passengers routinely wearing masks, counseling aircraft personnel to give masks to sick passengers instead.

 

Citing those policies, Air Canada spokessman John Reber said his airline, which serves Hong Kong and other Asian destinations, did not offer masks routinely but kept them in its in-flight medical kits.

 

Major Chinese airline China Southern Airlines Co Ltd is not offering masks, and neither is U.S. carrier Northwest Airlines Corp..

 

Jersin-Shammas, of Cathay Pacific, which offers masks, said the cool, dry climate of planes and industrial-strength air filters slowed the spread of illness on board.

[AZwolfman]

HEALTHY DON'T NEED MASKS -- OFFICIALS

. . . and those that come to the boarding gate sneezing and coughing, are they going to get boarding passes anyway?

[owenkrout]

CCTV-9 is running and re-running an interview with the Chief Minister of Health on the SARS problem. He answers some questions from the media. Although, like any politician anywhere, he evaded any questions that he didn't want to answer. They cut it off in the middle last night when the foreign press started to really press him on inconsistencies but it gives the official Chinese government line. You might be able to view it in the states if you have the Chinese international channel.