I wouldnt worry about it to be honest for a virus that has been about since late last year and the amount of deaths so far in the world is very few.

Sure we should be screening passengers from infected places but I personally wouldnt worry about it and would even travel to Toronto. The problem is these days with the mass media a hysteria is made about these things when more people get hit by a car everyday.

I agree with John. It's a problem, but put into context with other infectious diseases within the last century, the death rate is extremely low and, as John says, you're more likely to get killed crossing the road.

And will you stop crossing roads?

Of course not.

It's a case of taking sensible precautions and not putting yourself at risk.

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by whistler
It's a case of taking sensible precautions and not putting yourself at risk.

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This is something I'm having to decide at the moment. I'm due to fly out to Toronto at the end of May for a short break to see friends.

At the moment its very confusing - what/who's advice do you listen to?
Yesterday the W.H.O advised people not to travel unless necessary and that they would be reassesing the situation in Toronto in 3 weeks, which is the week before I'm travelling.

This is all well and good, but if it's still just advisory not to go there I will not be covered by my travel insurance. Hopefully the airline will have a degree of flexibility and allow me to travel at a later date, if they can't issue a refund.

Anyone know where I can get a weeks worth of surgical face masks?

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by moxymous
Anyone know where I can get a weeks worth of surgical face masks?

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send a self addressed envelope to

Mr M jackson
neverland ranch
california
usa
wackyland

if your really lucky he might send you the same spiderman ones he lets his kids wear!!!

Is this the time to mention I was in Toronto recently?

Not losing any sleep over it. 4% fatality rate to date and most of those are people who are old and/or debilitated already by other ailments.

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by Gooner
(quotes) send a self addressed envelope to
Mr M jackson

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Now that made me giggle

The news has been making comparisons compared to Aids about how much worse the epidemic could be etc etc. A couple of experts were stating that when Aids was first heard of that many people jumped to conclusions about how easily it could be caught and how people thought touching and kissing could pass it on.

Obviously over the years people have received better communications about how to protect themselves. However, it is scary that SARS is passed on seemingly like the flu as in its airborn and supposedly can linger around on things up to an hour after an infected person has been in the area.

I don't really see the point in the warnings on Toronto as people probably have as much chance of catching it wherever they go as the pyramid effect of where an infected traveller has been could hit any country sooner or later.

I guess the UK is lucky so far in that we've had cases of it, but no deaths (yet?) Perhaps its time we enforced being an island

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by Gooner
send a self addressed envelope to

Mr M jackson

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Brilliant suggestion

I'm not too concerned about catching SARS, cause if I'm going to get infected it'll be at work (airport).

Kinda worried yes... God Father lives in Hong Kong. Just don't want it to spread into a world epidemic. One thing I was nasty enough to laugh at, was that my old school (I left back in december, all girls school, loadsa bullying) have had to quarantine half the girls. Its a worrying thing and it does make me feel that it could be terrorists, but maybe i'm just jumping to the wrong conclusion.

By the way how did it officially start?

(Edited by lizzieslayer 26/04/2003 18:44)

Bit worried about getting back to school. I don't know whether this is common for the rest of the country, but it is for my area - we have a lot of chinese boarders who've been home for the holidays. At my school they're going to have daily checks (some schools are going to be quarantined), but won't that be a bit late?

Why are people making such a hassle about SARS? Because there is no known cure to it. The thread seems to be relativly limited as it only seems to be 5 - 8% more deadly than a good old lung infection.

Like Whistler said: you're more likely to get killed crossing the road.

The problem is that this thing is airborne and aslong as we don't have flying cars and we stay away from people that are flying miniature planes we are not likely not to catch anything "potentially" deadly from breathing the air we always breath.

Something that seemed so safe isn't safe anymore and there is nothing we can do to stop it at current time. Sure if we are healthy and not elderly / or babies (small children)odds are in our favour that if we get proper medicalcare on time we will survive it.

But it's especially the group of small children we fear for. We (the parents) are most likely to survive a thing like this, but our children won't. Just looking around in this thread I see a few parents (note: I'm not one of them!) already and I'm pretty sure that for them there is nothing worse than losing their child especially when you know they will have to endure a lot before they will actually die. And our medical science seems still to be totally "helpless" against it. We want to keep this "terrible" thing away from us as far as possible.

But if we look at the figures (as posted by sange)..... 7000 people infected 15 died. A whole bundle in Canada already survived and they are using the antibodies of those people to help people in hospitals in Canada already with great success (read less of them die).

Malaria kills over 2000 people (mostly children) a day! And the medication for it only costs give or take a pound or 2 max. Every 10 seconds no this planet someone dies this is 6 a minute --> 360 an hour --> 8640 a day and a large chunk of those are children. So aslong as the mortality rate of SARS doesn't go up and the infection really takes on large proportions I would say let the goverment do its thing and go along with your "normal" lives and take 5 seconds extra to watch while you cross the road and the chances you will live to see next week will have increased about 100x......

And Yally please don't be worried, one 1/5th of the world population is Chinese. Over 1.2 billion people to be precise in a country so big.... Only 7000 people are infected with SARS at current time of which most in China but most in hospitals anyways. Lets say you come in close enough contact with 5000 people (thats a lot of people you have to stand in close contact with) to actually get SARS if they had it: ((100 / 1.200.000.000) * 7000) * 5000 = 2.93% and that would be if all these people would run around freely coughing and breathing in your face instead of being quarantined in hospitals and other centers and thats not even considering the total size of the country. So chances you get infected by meeting people in China are under 0.1%. Sure the goverments will take no risks but please don't lay awake at night thinking about it.

(Edited by Chambler 27/04/2003 10:24)

I think people here are being remarkably (and unwisely) calm about this. I keep hearing comparisons to AIDS (which isnt airborne), to Malaria (you cant catch malaria by being around people who have it), to stats like walking across the road (you're basing the chances on the small number of people affected so far). Its a good thing nobody in China thinks like that because if they did the number infected would be far greater.

The big worry is not how many people were affected Today, it's how many people were affected the week before, and how much that figure has raised by now.

The number infected isnt 7000 by the way.

When I discussed this with my friends about a month ago, the number was around 1300. It now stands at 4836 as of today. It was only 4000 about a week ago. You keep watching that global number, because its going up in an alarming manner.

OK, so it might not be time to panic just yet, but we should definately not be complacent about this. We should be enforcing powers to be able to hospitalise suspected cases etc.

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by Funky Monkey
I think people here are being remarkably (and unwisely) calm about this. I keep hearing comparisons to AIDS (which isnt airborne), to Malaria (you cant catch malaria by being around people who have it), to stats like walking across the road (you're basing the chances on the small number of people affected so far). Its a good thing nobody in China thinks like that because if they did the number infected would be far greater.

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I think people are being remarkably resistant to some opportunist worry mongering by the press and her majesty's opposition.

China reacted to this extremely slowly and it still hasn't become an epidemic.

To date by the way, the UK Health Authorities believe there to be a grand total of... zero cases in the UK, possibly one.

It is neither particularly contagious nor especially lethal... the non lethality of it ironically means it may be slightly harder to get rid of but realistically the chances of it affecting your life are infinitesimal.

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When I discussed this with my friends about a month ago, the number was around 1300. It now stands at 4836 as of today. It was only 4000 about a week ago. You keep watching that global number, because its going up in an alarming manner."

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Alarm schmarm... less than 5,000 people across the planet originating on the most densely populated and poorly immunised continent on earth.

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OK, so it might not be time to panic just yet"

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No might about it...

Just my 2 penneth mind, but I have absolutely no worries about this whatsoever.

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by Incandenza
(quotes)

China reacted to this extremely slowly and it still hasn't become an epidemic.

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Ok, China have quarantine nearly 8000 people now, and have shut down the cities Cinemas, Theatres, Internet Cafes, and Schools. How is that not an epidemic?

Mr Heymann (the WHO chief of communicable diseases), asked if he was confident that the worldwide spread of Sars could be stopped, said: "No we are not. We are hoping."

I think this guy knows what he's talking about. He's not the media scaremongering, he's an expert.

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To date by the way, the UK Health Authorities believe there to be a grand total of... zero cases in the UK, possibly one.

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Wrong. There have been 6 cases in the UK with no deaths. And if you let any old bod into the country without checking them out, that number will rise.

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It is neither particularly contagious nor especially lethal...

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Hah, I think the average citizen of Bejing would beg to differ.

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Alarm schmarm... less than 5,000 people across the planet originating on the most densely populated and poorly immunised continent on earth.

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Why is everyone so short sighted? If you'd read my post you have seen that I said that its not the number thats impressive, its the speed its rising at.

It wouldnt really be that big a deal if the figure was stable. Other countries are starting to stop the new cases - china has not managed to contain it yet, the cases keep growing, and they appear to be growing exponentionally.

From a BBC News article:

"The 10 leaders of the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) are to meet in Bangkok on Tuesday for a half-day emergency summit to address Asia's worst crisis since the financial meltdown of 1997-1998. "

Oh yeah...of course, its not serious.

(Edited by Funky Monkey 28/04/2003 12:43)

And let's not forget they're thinking of effectively shutting down Hong Kong: unless I'm very much mistaken that could pretty much drive China's economy into the ground, not to mention South Korea closing down their entire vegetable market and quarantining all 2,000 - 3,000 workers.

Serious? Quite possibly. Especially when you take in account the new mutant strain that directly attacks the intestines...

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by Funky Monkey
Ok, China have quarantine nearly 8000 people now, and have shut down the cities Cinemas, Theatres, Internet Cafes, and Schools. How is that not an epidemic?

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None of which have anything to do with whether or not it is epidemic.

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Mr Heymann (the WHO chief of communicable diseases), asked if he was confident that the worldwide spread of Sars could be stopped, said: "No we are not. We are hoping."

I think this guy knows what he's talking about. He's not the media scaremongering, he's an expert.

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Absolutely, it would be very irresponsible of him to declare the he was "confident it could be stopped" if he wasn't, but that's no reason for his comments to be spun to give the impression that he believes that it can't be stopped, or that there is only hope.

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And if you let any old bod into the country without checking them out, that number will rise.

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Ignoring your fascinating grasp of logic, large scale effective screening is not viable due to the incubation period before symptoms manifest, and should SARS become epidemic accross mainland europe screening would become effectively impossible unless we chose to completely isolate ourselves; even then enough of the disease is already in the country to mean that we would still have to contend with it, though probably at a lower intensity.

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Hah, I think the average citizen of Bejing would beg to differ.

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Well the average citizen of Beijing would probably be wrong then. Though fairly contagious it's not so contagious that it spreads too quickly to contain, and the mortality rate is only around 15% IIRC, bad, but hardly as bad as some suggest. Those that are dieing are among the traditionally vulnerable groups -- elderly, infirm, very young, etc.

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Why is everyone so short sighted? If you'd read my post you have seen that I said that its not the number thats impressive, its the speed its rising at.

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It's hardly short sightedness, it's taking a balanced position on the matter. This is important given that SARS has been grabbed by the world press as some world-killing disease that could prompt the collapse of civilisation, the end of humanity, and lions laying down with lambs. The numbers are too small, and the timescale to short to do any meaningfull analysis of the rate at which the infection isspreading. Early on in an outbreak the proportion of cases which go unidentified will be very high, and this number will drop as the outbreak progresses; even if the rate of new infections stays constant it will appear to grow as we become better at identifying cases and pick up previously missed cases.

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It wouldnt really be that big a deal if the figure was stable. Other countries are starting to stop the new cases - china has not managed to contain it yet, the cases keep growing, and they appear to be growing exponentionally.

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As an adjunct to my previous comment, I'm not aware of any statistics which indicate exponential growth.

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"The 10 leaders of the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) are to meet in Bangkok on Tuesday for a half-day emergency summit to address Asia's worst crisis since the financial meltdown of 1997-1998. "

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Yes, it's bad; but what's worse is the panic which seems to have gripped much of the world; like your quote says -- this is the worst crisis to have hit Asia in 5 years.

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by Funky Monkey
Wrong. There have been 6 cases in the UK with no deaths. And if you let any old bod into the country without checking them out, that number will rise.

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These are points reported by The Observer yesterday:

The UK Health Protection Agency says there may not have been any definite cases of SARS in the UK.

The six probables to date all exhibited pneumonia-like symptoms but none had definitely been in contact with people known to be infected, according to the agency's head of respiratory diseases, John Watson.

He went on to say that they were probably not SARS cases and that one or two might turn out to be genuine.

A seventh possible case in Plymouth is no longer being treated as Sars.

'SARS has almost no impact in UK' doesn't make such a good headline though.

In other news:

The WHO believes the disease has peaked in Canada, Hong Kong and Singapore and been contained in Vietnam.

China remains the biggest trouble spot with 3,000 (approx) cases to date and 139 deaths (4.6% mortality rate).

Personally I think that this is distracting everyone from a far greater threat to life and limb. In this country alone, 1500 people die falling down the stairs each year. I suggest new legislation to ensure people only live and work in bungalows!

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by Funky Monkey
(quotes)
Why is everyone so short sighted? If you'd read my post you have seen that I said that its not the number thats impressive, its the speed its rising at.

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I dont think its short sighted this bugs been about since late last year so cases arent rising that much, theres to worry about without some small scale virus. I think the media is making a big deal out of it as its something to report on since the Gulf conflict is almost over, nothing sells papers more than death.

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by JtB
(quotes)

I dont think its short sighted this bugs been about since late last year so cases arent rising that much, theres to worry about without some small scale virus. I think the media is making a big deal out of it as its something to report on since the Gulf conflict is almost over, nothing sells papers more than death.

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Ok, JTB first

Your statement backs up what I said. As you say, its been around since last year, and it started with a very small number of cases. That small number grew into a handful, that handful grew into a bus full, that bus full grew into hundreds, and those hundreds grew into thousands.

I was talking about exponential (or near exponential growth), what you've said only highlights this.

If this disease which has been around since last year is so un-important, how come its increased by a from around a 1000 people a month ago to around 4000 now?

If its so unimportant, and plainly all some media storm, why are MAJOR steps being taken by the Chinese goverment to keep it under control. If these are everyday events being blown out of proportion, are you trying to tell me this sort of thing happens all the time?

If the chinese government hadnt taken the steps they are now, how many more people would be affected?

And I strongly disagree that it is the media trying to find a new story - this story broke just as the gulf war was kicking off, and got almost no attention, even though it was a major story then - its only got the attention it deserves because of the gulf stuff coming to some kind of conclusion, not because they had nothing else to report, but because there had been a big story waiting in the sidelines the whole time that should have got more coverage even then.