Why isn't international air travel from Hong Kong and China being discontinued?

[Sava]

You've been watching too much "sensationalist" media Lancer...

[Tingkai]

Hong Kong's Health Minister Yeoh Eng-kiong said there is no reason to panic.

"You really need to be sensitive about this and not have a global panic about this infection because we do not know about its origin, we do not know about its extent," he said.

Yes, we don't know anything except that the infection can be fatal and it is spreading around the world, but don't worry, be happy.

Meanwhile, Mainland Chinese health officials say they cannot directly co-operate with Hong Kong to contain the infection because of the "one country, two systems" policy.

[Edan]

Originally posted by Sava
You've been watching too much "sensationalist" media

Or too many episodes of "Survivors"

[Lemmy]

Ah buggered..
The brit who got sick flew from Hongkong to Amsterdam, and from Amsterdam to Manchester with KLM (Dutch Royal Airlines).

Let's see....each day i travel to Amsterdam Airport by train, and take a bus from there to my work.
In that bus there are always almost several KLM personel (including stewardesses ) present.
And finally, right across the street from where i work, there is a nice KLM building.

I guess i should be lucky that the disease is only transmitted by prolonged contact, and not by air. But overcrowded trains and busses nullify that

[Urban Ranger]

Just heard on the news, the disease-causing organisam for SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) has been isolated by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, at least for the Hong Kong - based cases.

Apparently, it is different from the microbe that caused the recent pneumonia cases in Mainland China.

[Urban Ranger]

Just in case you paranoid people haven't seen this.

[Lancer]

Readyness...

Some people survived the black plague, others didn't. Some of the survivors were ready because they thought it out, others just had dumb luck, so you have a chance to survive the next great plague UR.

You're dumb, now you just need the luck.

[Urban Ranger]

Com'on Lance, that's such a crappy troll. Can't you do better?

[Lancer]

no...

[Lancer]

[Edan]

Virus Behind Mystery Killer Pneumonia Identified

[Lancer]

Good news Edan.

Now they know the enemy...

[DaShi]

Update on China's simply amazing efforts to coorporate with the WHO.

More Cases Question Beijing's Candor on New Pneumonia
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL


EIJING, March 19 — Just one day after Chinese officials announced that an outbreak of an unusually deadly pneumonia was "effectively under control," news of previously unreported, potential cases emerged from a military hospital in Beijing, suggesting that the government was not being fully candid with international health agencies seeking to curb an emerging worldwide epidemic.

This month two patients, a husband and wife, died from an atypical pneumonia at an infectious-disease hospital in Beijing, a doctor said. The doctor added that a group of doctors and nurses who treated the patients was now showing symptoms of pneumonia as well.

All over the world, such "index" patients have infected health care workers in a wave of secondary spreading of the disease.

Chinese health officials have said that all of the country's cases so far — 305 patients, 5 of whom have died — were clustered in the southern province of Guangdong. They asserted that the domestic outbreak peaked in February and was now petering out.

"The patients have recovered gradually and are resuming their normal lives," a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Kong Quan, said this week.

The unusual pneumonia, which the World Health Organization has confirmed in 219 people outside of China with at least 4 deaths, causes a serious breathing condition called severe acute respiratory syndrome. Though so far concentrated in East Asia, cases have cropped up as far away as Germany and Canada, spread by sick patients traveling along airline routes.

Most scientists believe that the new disease first emerged in Guangdong late last year, and international health officials say that the initial lack of cooperation from China in reporting its data has seriously hampered their efforts to understand a new global health threat.

Health statistics in China concerning a wide range of diseases, from tuberculosis to AIDS, are regarded as politically sensitive and so are often misrepresented or never made public. This week, the Chinese government ordered Chinese journalists not to report on the outbreak of the strange pneumonia, a reporter at a large newspaper in Guangdong said.

Ian Simpson, a spokesman for the World Health Organization in Geneva, said that Chinese health officials had given them no information about potential cases outside of Guangdong, but that its field workers had "heard rumors" and were checking them out. It is not clear where the couple in Beijing may have contracted the disease.

But some doctors here have long been skeptical of the government's claim that the disease was confined to the area around Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, since sick airline passengers have carried it all over the globe.

"It is impossible that it wouldn't be here because there is so much air travel," a doctor in Beijing said. "But the government is keeping a tight lid on it."

There are 18 flights a day from Guangzhou to Beijing and 17 from Guangzhou to Shanghai, and there is little reason to think the disease would not move along those routes as well.

Scientists in Hong Kong and Germany said on Tuesday that they might have identified the virus responsible for the outbreak, a paramyxovirus that belongs to the family of germs that includes measles. If that proved conclusive, it would help explain why the virus spread so readily to doctors and nurses taking care of these patients: the germ is so small that it passes through ordinary surgical masks.

Special surgical mask with smaller pores were on sale at some hospitals in Beijing today.

There were scattered reports today of new suspected cases in Europe, all in patients who had traveled from Southeast Asia. French health officials said a patient from Hanoi — now in Orléans, in central France — was believed to have the first case in that country. They gave no further details.

"This shows the situation is not under control yet, and we remain on maximum sanitary alert," the health minister, Jean-François Mattei, said in Parliament.

Irish health authorities said they had two suspected cases, both from Southeast Asia. Both are in isolation wards in a Dublin hospital.

Doctors said the first patient seemed to be recovering well, but local news reports carried headlines about the arrival of a "killer bug."

Fears over the disease forced a flight from Paris to Atlanta to stop at Shannon Airport near Limerick on Tuesday, after a 6-month-old girl showed symptoms that turned out to be ordinary pneumonia.

Although the first cases of an unusual pneumonia in Guangdong were reported by the local Chinese press last November, information from the government has generally been scant. Chinese officials agree to the involvement of the World Health Organization just two weeks ago. This week, for the first time, they provided the W.H.O. with a report on the epidemic.

"Persuading the Chinese health officials to let them look at their records to figure out what had happened was a gargantuan task," a foreign doctor said. "But now they are getting more cooperation."

As the death toll around Guangzhou mounted this winter, giving rise to panicky runs on antibiotics and traditional medicines, even the Chinese state-controlled news media became incensed, demanding the release of more information. But in the end, little more was made public, and the government told newspapers that there was to be no further reporting on the topic.

Clearly they are learning from their AIDS mistakes.

[Urban Ranger]

Virus isolated

The virus is found to be a type of corona virus, and the disease is now called corona virus pneumonia instead of SARS or atypical pneumonia.

It is not an airborne virus. The main route of transmission is by touching your eyes, nose, or mouth with your hand while you have the virus on your hand.

[Tingkai]

Things are just getting crazy here.

The other Legislative Council member representing the medical community was explaining how to wear a face mask, even though he knew this virus is not airborne. So a face mask is not going to protect you.

Meanwhile, the South China Morning Post runs two frontpage stories about the virus on Wednesday. The first story says 17 people have died worldwide. The story beside it has a headline saying 20 have died in Guangdong! The first story also said almost 500 people infected, including 250 in Hong Kong. The second story says 300 infected in Guangdong which would put the total infected number at more than 500.

Singapore and Ontario are putting infected people into quarantine. HK is not.

WORST OF ALL. The Stones just cancelled their concerts and I had tickets to see them. What a bunch of ****ers!!!