A head executive at the company my husband works for was recently travelling to an area where there is a high incidence of SARS. Although he has no symptoms of being unwell, he was asked not to bother coming to work for ten days.
My husband was sent to his home to fix his computer. He spent most of the morning there, then came home for lunch, then went back to work. Think if he coughs on his boss he can get ten days off work with pay?
I would milk it for all it’s worth.
On the plane from Shanghai to the US on Sunday, there was a guy who had been recalled by his company owing to the SARS “threat”. He was really pissed off that it interrupted his work, but said what the hell he was going to “recover” on the beach for 10 days.
I have an employee whose wife works in a “leper” ward(not my word, but rather the Chinese hospital’s). Crossing my fingers and seriously considering sending my wife and child to the States before a ban on air travel or a general quarantine takes effect.
Btw, I live in a rather large, off-the-beaten-path Chinese city which is now inundated with cases.
I was in one of the major Toronto Chinatowns last Saturday. I may have been exposed. I feel fine.
I was in Beijing for 10 days, just got back last week. I am fine.
However, the people around me here in the States have responded with ignorance about the disease, how it’s spread, etc and more than a few have stayed home because of me.
Puleeeze.
I went to Chinatown for dinner the other night because Chinese restaurants in Toronto are doing really, really badly these days. (Mmm … garlic eggplant …) And no, I am not worried about being exposed.
A friend of mine was at that funeral home that had a SARS victim in it so she’s under voluntary quarantine now.
I’m under voluntary quarantine, too, in order to finish my term papers.
Where are you located? Can you explain what inundated with cases means?
When I get caught up at work, I’ll give ancedotal reports from Shanghai.
Unless someone at LAX, CDG, or AMS coming from one of the SARS areas coughed on me while I was travelling to and from the US, I should have zero exposure.
You have no more chance of being exposed there then anywhere else in the city.
There have been precisely zero cases of transmission of SARS in “Chinatown”. The vast majority of Toronto cases have been in health care workers and others exposed to the index case(s) at Scarborough Grace, a few secondary cases especially among family members of the originally infected, and most recently, a couple of more cases when infections weren’t recognized in people from the 1st and 2nd wave (causing precautions not to have been taken).
Your statement (above) borders on the racist and is, at best, rooted in lack of understanding.
I work in a medical lab right across the bench from the infectious disease guys. They could have been sent a SARS-infected sample by a doctor who just thought it was regular pneumonia…
I ordered sesame chicken from the Chinese joint in my small Indiana town. I think I should go under voluntary quarantine :rolleyes:
In other words: nope, not exposed.
I live in Shanghai, work in a large multinational, work in a building with thousands of worker bees, eat in a food court, live in an apartment complex with 500 households, flew to the US and back in the past week.
In other words: nope, not exposed.
Although I agree with the above, IIRC the two vector cases for Toronto were a Chinese-Canadian and her son returning from China. So it’s a possibility (as random as any other mentioned in this thread) that these two unfortunate people (both died, right?) lived in/near Chinatown, or would seem so to people from outside of Toronto. Now in my limited experience with Toronto it’s an incredibly diverse city and I don’t even know where “Chinatown” is there. I’d say it’s statistically unlikely that the original SARS victims were Chinatown residents. And as stated, direct, sustained exposure seems to be the key.
And obviously she’s not alone in this misapprehension, as shown by this attempt by Chretien to ease public fears:
A bigger risk factor would be if you were a member of this woman’s church.
My advisor just got back from 2 weeks in Singapore, and he said it was pretty scary over there with all the precautions being taken (since they have the highest per capita infection rate there).
People, I’m currently going through a Really Nasty spring cold. I have it, my wife has it, and my 7-month old son has it. I don’t travel to Asia; I just drive to the skyscraper I work in and back each day. Still, even though my chances of exposure are less than zero, I have to admit that SARS is my current deepest darkest nightmare.
My friend recently came back from the states after going to a training seminar in CA. He met with people from Tiawan (SP) and when he came back, his boss told him to “relax” for 10 days. He’s showed no signs of having SARS. I’m glad too because as soon as he came back we took a trip to Thunderbay to pick up my sister (20+ hours driving with him).
My SO’s brother is a nurse at a local hospital and is now always wearing a surgical mask. I guess it can be serious but I’m not worried about SARS.
I just can’t fathom the amount of ignorance around here about SARS though. I remember hearing on the radio (I think) about the racism SARS is causing. I mean, come on! First it was “cooties” with black people and now people think SARS is a Chinese-only issue and shunning Chinese people? Don’t these people know the basics of disease and viruses?
I just returned to Paris from a 3 week vacation in Hong Kong and was not exactly impressed by the efforts to stop the spread of SARS on my way back. In Hong Kong, despite announcing they’d check everyone’s temperature a week earlier, when I left they still hadn’t organized it. The Cathay Pacific control is about as effective as those questions they ask about who packed your bag. There are two questions: Have you been in contact with anyone that has SARS? and Do you have a fever or any other of the following symptoms, etc.? I mean, really, if you admit any of this you might as well be checking into a government hospital instead of your flight out of the country. I’m sure there are a few dishonest folks out there… By the way, none of the Cathay Pacific folks wore masks (it’s a whole different debate whether they work) and I question this slightly, though I didn’t wear a mask myself.
On the plane, 95% of the passengers and 100% of the flight crew wore masks for the first hour of the flight. By the end of the flight, 20% of the passengers and 50% of the flight crew still wore them. I estimate that 0% never took off the mask during the flight.
Landing in Heathrow and transferring to my flight was like melting into the fabric of society. No masks, no questions, no controls, no temperature checks, nothing. By the time I got to Paris, I might have well been travelling from anywhere - nobody cared I’d been in Hong Kong, nobody asked, nobody wore masks (any HK travellers that were transferring to Paris like me [the original direct HK-Paris flight had been cancelled] all stopped wearing masks by this stage).
I don’t know what my point is, I’m healthy and a little jet-lagged and glad to be home, but any misconception that authorities are on the lookout for SARS is just that, a misconception. Okay, that’s a bit harsh but still, it seems to be up to the individuals that might have it to be the people to control it.
I guess HK has temperature checks in place now, but have I been exposed to SARS? I doubt it - but airplanes don’t strike me as real safe at the moment.
The missus and I just retrned from Singapore a day before the news of the SARS outbreaks started hitting. We were both quite ill with something and my wife was sick for 2 week, had basically all the symptoms but it went away on it’s own. I am sure we may have been exposed byt no one we are in contact with seems to have gotten sick.
My best friend is flying in from Hong Kong in a few days to be the best man at my wedding.
I’ll let you know…
Barry
We had OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) from China visiting our office last week. I heard they were tested for SARS before leaving China. As well, a lot of the sales & technical marketing people were at the NAB trade show in Las Vegas the week before last.
I dunno - I don’t want to be paranoid, but seeing as I live with an immunocompromised partner, I can’t risk bringing something like this home. It could kill him. I keep hearing that if you’re “young and healthy,” and come down with SARS, you’ll get over it with treatment. What people don’t seem to realize is that there are people with HIV/AIDS - and those who live with them - who have to be extra careful. (Then again, that’s become second nature for us, WRT every little bug.)