Foot and Mouth? US OPINIONS REQUESTED

Umm yeah. The thing is, I heard on Radio 4 the other day that a lot of US Citizens are deciding not to come to the UK because they believe their hands and feet will fall off if they catch foot-and-mouth. This is strange, because the only Americans I know are those on the SDMB, and everybody here seems pretty smart! I’m assuming this is complete rubbish, but where on earth did the information come from? And what do you guys really think about foot and mouth? You are aware it’s completely harmless to humans, right? That you won’t really face £5000 fines for leaving your cars in the highlands? How helpful is it that the State Dept. has listed us alongside Macedonia as a world danger spot?

Feeling a bit like the kid with nits in the corner of the international playground…

Are you sure they weren’t joking on the radio? Everyone I know seems pretty well-informed about foot and mouth, including the few people in my office where I just did a quick poll. They all knew the basics - it’s extremely contagious, it’s not harmful to humans, and it can cause huge damage to livestock and therefore, the economy. None of us know anything about fines for leaving your car anywhere, though…I guess that sort of detail hasn’t reached us here in South Carolina.

My personal opinion is that it is helpful, at this point, to discourage traffic as much as possible between our country and countries that are having foot and mouth outbreaks. I wouldn’t want our farmers to have to go through as much devastation as yours have had to face (although I’ve heard that many people think it’s inevitable that the disease will reach us).

Either the people on the radio made the story up for an easy joke or some idiot who happens to be American really did make the stupid comment.

If there is any hesitation bout traveling to the UK it is probably out of a desire to keep F&M off of our shores.

Even city-dwellers like me, who have no reason to care particularly about spreading H&M (hmmm, pity no one’s quarantined the department store of same name) are cancelling because they know they won’t be able to visit the lovely English countryside. Many Americans are anglophiles thanks to things like All Creatures and Brideshead, and to find yourself on vacation and unable to escape Eastenders is a bit much for the spirit to endure, no?

:slight_smile:

FYI: our Public Broadcasting System (PBS, government-funded educational television) was long nicknamed the Petroleum British System, since all of the shows were from the UK and all of the sponsors were oil companies.

I hadn’t heard that one.

Granted I’m not planning on coming over anytime soon, but that’s because I’m broke.

And I wouldn’t let it stop me otherwise.

Hmmm…

My current client has their UK operations in Alderly Park, and people are coming and going from there all the time. I haven’t noticed any slowing of traffic.

Please note, we haven’t had an outbreak of H&M here in the states since 1929, and therefore is pretty low on our horizon.

The Travel section of Sunday’s Orlando Sentinel (and judging from all the accents I hear, you Brits LOVE Orlando) has an article about how some – not a vast number, but some – Americans are calling off trips to the UK because rural areas such as the Lake Country are essentially off-limits now to just about everyone.

How many Europeans cancelled vacation plans to Florida in the early '90s because a German tourist made a wrong turn from the Miami airport, and ended up being one of the extremely rare folks carjacked and killed? Americans overreacting about hoof and mouth is equivalent to Europeans overreacting about crime in the US. (Basically, if you aren’t selling crack in Gary, Camden, Compton or East St. Louis, the streets of an American city are about as safe as those in Europe, if not more so due to the lack of … bah, if I said it, I’d get flamed.)