SARS is getting worse not better.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by alva

The Canadian Red Cross hid information about HIV contaminated blood for years.

So has France,..Germany...

Why is everyone here so reluctant to critisize it's own country? The last time I looked around, Utopia wasn't there (yet...)

" never trust your goverment "

Uhhmmm. He's a Canadian living in Hong Kong. Don't get us started on Canada, please? We'll be here well after 500 posts.

Originally posted by RedFred
What? I thought that the topic was SARS.

Is it just me, or do others find people coughing without covering their mouths or spitting in public even more offensive than prior to the SARS outbreak?

It's not just you.

[Thue]

Originally posted by LoneWolf
Well, I've said this before, but apparently it didn't stick.
SARS is a media event. 250,000 people die every day, 3,000 just from malaria. In 1918, 600,000 died from the flu in the US. Now THAT is an epidemic. Equal to 1.5 million today. The only year in which the US population has declined.
I feel bad for those who have died, and their families, but it is not a major event.

I think the point is that 1.5million could easily die if it ran unchecked.

[mindseye]

I think the point is that 1.5million could easily die if it ran unchecked.

That and the fact that, as a mysterious new threat, people had no way to gauge it's risk level. Even though malaria kills 3,000 a day, it's a known risk, and people know how to deal with (or avoid) it. Until they had the same knowledge about SARS, for all anyone knew it could have wiped out half the planet's population.

Now, as people have access to reliable information that allows them to accurately assess the risk, they are starting to return to their normal lives. GZ and BJ are fast returning to normal, friends there tell me.

Shanghai is just peaking its wave of paranoia, the number of masks worn around town is starting to drop I think. Out-of-towners are still being quarantined, however, and teachers like me are still out of work. (classes are expected to open again mid-June)

[mindseye]

Reported in today's New York Times:

Number of SARS Cases Falls Sharply in China
By ERIK ECKHOLM


EIJING, May 30 — China has nearly tamed the SARS epidemic, with new cases dwindling and no evidence of the wildfire spread in the hinterlands that experts had feared, a senior health official said today.

Daily reports of new SARS cases nationwide averaged 151 in early May but fell to 14 in the final third of the month as the epidemic "started to be effectively controlled," said Gao Qiang, executive vice minister of health, at a news conference today.

The country reported seven new SARS cases in the 24 hours ending this morning, six of them in Beijing. A cumulative total of 5,600 cases have been reported nationwide since the epidemic began last fall in the southern province of Guangdong, with a total of 328 deaths.

Mr. Gao, who took effective command of the health ministry on April 20, when the former health minister and the mayor of Beijing were both fired, cautioned against complacency. But he said that the country's sweeping new measures of quarantine, contact tracing and infection control appeared to be taking effect. The disease has largely been confined to Guangdong, Beijing and a few provinces near the capital, he said, and "there has not been large-scale spread in rural areas."

International experts still raise questions about China's SARS reporting but generally agree that the disease appears to be waning. Some warn that SARS might resurge in the fall, a pattern shown by related viruses.

Mr. Gao defended the statistics today, saying, "I've learned that infectious diseases are impossible to cover up."

But he refused to offer special praise to a retired military doctor who in mid-April played a key role in exposing an official cover-up of SARS.

At a time when the health minister at that time, Zhang Wenkang, claimed that Beijing had only 12 SARS cases and that the disease was under "effective control," the doctor, Jiang Yanyong, told the news media that more than 100 SARS patients were being treated in a few military hospitals alone, with many deaths.

Alarmed by Dr. Jiang's claims and other evidence, the World Health Organization demanded access to Beijing hospitals and found that SARS was far more prevalent than officials had admitted.

On April 20, China's top leaders changed course dramatically, firing the two officials, pledging honest numbers and starting huge control campaigns.

Dr. Jiang was not been punished for speaking out and has recently won praise from a few newspapers, but he was also ordered by military superiors to stop speaking to the press.

"I don't know why people are so interested in Dr. Jiang," Mr. Gao said today when asked about the man considered by many people here to be a real hero.

"We have six million doctors and health care workers and Jiang Yanyong is one of them," he said, praising the profession as a whole for its sacrifices.

Mr. Gao did say, though, that the epidemic had exposed the unprepared state of China's public health agencies and medical facilities. As the immediate threat of SARS recedes, he said, he faces the even more
daunting task of fixing those problems.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Here

The operative word in your original post was "widespred." The report you linked certainly doesn't do it.

Originally posted by DinoDoc

Certainly the Chinese government hasn't been profiling minorities.

Here

What does this has anything to do with racial profiling?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by DaShi
You're the first Chinese person I've heard to say this. Usually it is the opposite. The Chinese profile minorities more than most nation and are far more discrimnating. Mainland and Hong Kong are a huge difference over there. Overseas Chinese even more so. There's all the regional pride in the mainland. The Chinese are generally racist against Chinese as well as everyone else. Homeless are even considered citizens in China. In fact, most of the truly homeless I saw usually looked badly beaten.

I remember you claimed to have been to China. Nevertheless, your own words are all we got.

Originally posted by DaShi
One of the first warnings I got when I went to China was to becareful. Never to go out into the countryside alone for fear of being robbed and killed.

That has something to do with the government?

Originally posted by DaShi
But true there is less likely to be a lunatic with a gun going around shooting people. I hear they prefer bombs there anyway.

You hear? Okay. That means you really haven't been to China, afterall.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
The operative word in your original post was "widespred." The report you linked certainly doesn't do it.

I never mentioned the word widespread in my post. However, since I refuse to get into an arguement over semantics, why don't you do me the favor of telling me how you find the report insufficent?

What does this has anything to do with racial profiling?

Nothing, Other than being quite a bit worse.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by PLATO1003
DinoDoc, The Amnesty International article you cited clearly shows that UR is a victim of propoganda in his own country.

What does this suppose to mean? I have never denied human rights violations occur. I deny that the occurances are systemetic and widespread. Certainly none of the reports DD cited could back up his own assertions.

Originally posted by PLATO1003
UR, you read that didn't you? I can only hope that you and your fellow residents can one day have government by the people for the people. Until then, keep your head down and keep yelling that everything is just great in China. We know they are watching...we understand why you must keep up your facade. Good Luck.

So, are you implying everything is great in good old US of A, that bad things are not happening inside and outside the country?

Oh, let me see.

A Catalogue of Failures: G8 Arms Exports and Human Rights Violations

No more excuses: The USA must obey International Court decision on prisoners' rights

PROGRAM FOR ACTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE USA

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Hypocrisy or human rights? Time to choose

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A time for action - Protecting the consular rights of foreign nationals facing the death penalty

This is just a short list of various AI documents on human rights abuses in the US. The truth of the story is your backyard isn't exactly clean. I fail to see why you are all so diligently telling other countries that their houses are dirty, when you should first clean up your own.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
I never mentioned the word widespread in my post. However, since I refuse to get into an arguement over semantics, why don't you do me the favor of telling me how you find the report insufficent?

Let me refresh your memory:

By what standard of human rights is the extensive use of torture in China OK?

No, you have never used the very exact word "widespread," but who is playing a semantics game now?

Since you mentioned "extensive," it seems to me that you'd be the one who needs to actually establish such is the case.

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Nothing, Other than being quite a bit worse.

A few people got killed in several days of rioting. How's that worse? How many people got killed in the LA riotings sparked by the Rodney King beatings?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I have never denied human rights violations occur.

The usual response is something along the lines of, "There's nothing to see here. Move along. MY GOD LOOK AT HOW AWFUL THE US IS! "

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by DaShi
So in order to be evil you just have to squash Hong Kong. Tibet isn't enough?

How exactly is Tibet squashed?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
The usual response is something along the lines of, "There's nothing to see here. Move along. MY GOD LOOK AT HOW AWFUL THE US IS! "

So you are asserting that all is peachy over there in the US of A?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by mindseye

4) Around 75% of China's population is rural, and they are all trying simultaneously to enter the cities to find work.

I've heard this phenomena called the largest migration in human history, in terms of sheer numbers. The social, political, and economic repurcussions are staggering.

I think they are trying to keep the peasants back in villages by developing small enterprises on site.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
So you are asserting that all is peachy over there in the US of A?

I'm saying I fail to see the relevence in the comparison in a thread about China and I don't understand why it gets brought up in these threads (mainly by you). It makes about as much sense as comparing the country to the Taliban government and saying things aregreat because of it.

[LoneWolf]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger




So you are asserting that all is peachy over there in the US of A?

Yes.