Job Discussion Forums

[senor boogie woogie]

Hola!

I am here living in Hangzhou, known by me as "my little slice of Oriental heaven" when one day I walk outside and everyone is wearing a surgical mask. SARS has arrived here in paradise.

I am not scared of SARS. I have to take a bus to go to work. I ride taxis. I enjoy going to my watering hole for pijou with the boys (good Sino-Western relationships, cocktail hour is very important in the expat life). I enjoy night markets. I am a portly American entering midlife having more fun than the law allows.

I am married to a lovely Chinese woman. Now, she is scared. She has FORCED me to come back to her small town of Dongyang with her, because Hangzhou is infected and Dongyang isn't. Now, she tells me not to go anywhere without her and not to go to the computer room unless I am next to a door or window. She wants me to sit at home and hide. In Hangzhou, she refused to leave the house except to go to the market across the street (where a carrier might be). Around her, I feel like a 10 year old child grounded by my parents.

Well, as I said before, one can get SARS anywhere, from the bus, train, or night market. The man who cooks your food in the restaurant might cough on your food, you might pass someone on the street who is a carrier, the beautiful oriental lovely in the disco or KTV might have it, anything can happen. Obviously, we CANNOT HIDE. We have to earn a living, and I dare to say that most of us like here and do not want to go back to where we were from. So, I say, go on with your normal routine. Work, play and have fun. I would rather be sick with SARS than hide in my apartment and eschew my daily life here. China, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam and yes, Hong Kong is just too damned good to be missed, even for a day!

Also, in July, I am going to Laos and southern China for 5 weeks' SARS or no SARS!!!!

SENOR

[Egas]

Dear Senor,

I can synpathise with you. My girfriend is banning me from going to the bars, when there is nobody there to get SARS from! Yes, I think we all have to get on with our lives. SARS will be here for some time to come, and we cannot hide away from the world. The reality is that you still have dozens of more times the chance of dying in a car accident, or work place accident than of SARS at its current level. The ultimate irony is that you are 200 times as likely to die from one of the various other kinds of pneumonia currently in China, than you are of dying from SARS. Most people just don't seem to get this. It must ber a little deflating for those 20 000 or so souls who are going to die this month from other kinds of pneumonia, when the only ones getting any attention are the 100- 200 who will die from SARS. (Surely its not worth the 15 seconds of infamy!)

Of course the numbers will grow, and it remains to be seen when the plateau will come. Let's hope its not to high.

[gmat]

Egas, I agree with most of your post but I'd like to see a link to the statistics you are using regarding 20,000 deaths a month from other types of pneumonia. Sounds too much like an "urban legend"

edit :typo

[TEECHER]

Gmat my friend, You got it all wrong!!! Egas is actually married to arioch36 and they are both already "urban legends". Bye for now

[Hamish]

senor boogie woogie!

As my friends and I used to say oh so long ago now, RIGHT ON!

Regards,

[hubei_canuk]

" My girfriend is banning me from going to the bars, when there is nobody there to get SARS from! Yes, I think we all have to get on with our lives. SARS will be here for some time to come, and we cannot hide away from the world. The reality is that you still have dozens of more times the chance of dying in a car accident, or work place accident than of SARS at its current level."
...
Egas! You mention your girlfriend and Bars quit a bit. I think i'd like to help you out here a little bit.... it's probably not the sars your girlfriend is trying to keep you away form.
..
My philosophy on car accidents: When the light turns green i let somebody else rush right accrss the street and cross right at the corner where the traffic is turning (is that you egas?).
I cross 10 feet down from the corner after a 10 second pause in which to give an opportunity for the careless drivers to hit the careless pedestrians.
Not gonna be me!!!
..
mr boogie woogie. Of course, life must go on. I will continue to go out too, but with some caution. Lucky for you you can stay home too and boogie woogie.
Good luck to you and Mrs Boogie!

[Egas]

I'll see if I can track down the source for the 20 000. But I see that my math was a bit off upstairs. It should have been around 50-100 times more likely to get other forms of pneumonia.

Off hand the 20 000 should be about right. 3000 die each month in the US with about 1/4 the population of China, so if all things were equal, the figure would be around 12 000 in China. But hygiene and medical ammenities in China are nothing like the US, which might account for the higher rate. Comparing the rate with Hong Kong's would probably be more accurate. I know about 250 people a month die in HK from pneumonia, with a poulation of 7 million people. Multiply that by 200 (China's pop is nearly 200 times greater than HK's) and you get 50 000. So without getting back to my source, the 20 000 figure would not be terribly surprising. Check my math and tell me if I'm wrong.

[hubei_canuk]

Those pneumonia stats may be meaningless based upon how people are infected by pneumonia.
Are normal healthy people infected by pneu. by casual contact ie. excange or contact with fluid in which the virus can live outside the body for 24 hours?
I.e. does it function as a plague with a geometrical rate of infection and can infect anybody?
If not, it is not something to be treated with the same lack of concern.
I won't get pneu from faulty plumbing or shaking hands with Mr. Cretien.
..
So for the time being it really deserves its 3 months of infamy.
Do i relly have to worry about pneu.? If so tell me what precautions to take. Really i would be interested!
..
But about SARS i KNOW i have to be worried no matter how small the rate. If i were in Beijing i think i would skip maggies bar for a while..although it really does sound interesting.
---------------------------


Now remember death rates have been suddenly revised. HK health care one of the is best in the world. Yet i doubt if they could handle more than what 500 ...2000 patients.
Health care in hubei for sars would be non-existent. Only isolation ward and left to die or live. What would be the mortality rate then? Is the untreated mortality rate 100 percent? I would like to know this because if i get it there is no chance of any treatment, i'm not going to go to any hbei hospital. Believe me i've been to many of them here already. I know more than most of those doctors. I've had to educate myself in order to treat myself for various ills. There is nothing worse than a chinese doctor.
They will give you the wrong treatment just to make money. So the pharmacy will sell you the wrong medicine just to make money.
If it's not a money thing it's a face thing. They always lie. They never tell the truth. Thye spent 6 years of education, the primary function of which was learning to lie and save face and not to communicate.
I could go on and on and elucidate with personal experience but i haven't got the time.
.................
Anyway, excuse me i got to go out and buy some food. It just occured to me yesterday that if anyone in this apartment compound gets it or has visited someone who has it i might get quarantined here.
I mean.. they surrounded the beijing hospitals and wouldn't let anyone in or out!!!!
I guess not even the guy who just delivered a pizza!!!

[Egas]

My point in mentioning pneumonia rates is that around 20 000 people are gonna snuff it this coming month (and every month after that) in China from pneumonia, regardless of whether you wanna call it infectious or not. You say its not much cause for concern? My point is that it is a big bloody concern for those people that it kills. We don't know who those people are. Maybe someone on this forum will be one of them. It's actually statistically a hell of a lot more likely than getting SARS. Why not panic about that? It seems a more legitimate reason for panic to me.

[Egas]

By the way Teecher, Arioch 36 and I are just friends... I think you are just jealous..

[TEECHER]

DARN IT!!! Is it that obvious??????

[gmat]

Egas,

Just looked at some Stats from the CDC. In the US, there are approx. 5,000 deaths per month from 'influenza and pneumonia'.

Now people can twist statistics any way they want but I like to rely on experts when it comes to medical issues; and experts at the WHO and CDC are worried.

A quote from today:

"A World Health Organisation official said SARS could become a
horrifying epidemic if it spread in China's provinces or in nations
like India and Bangladesh, where people live cheek-by-jowl and
medical facilities are poor.

"There will be various countries in the world where we would be
really concerned because we don't think they have the capacity to
stem the tide once it is introduced," WHO official Wolfgang Preiser
told reporters in Shanghai.

"It may have happened already, we don't know."

[arioch36]

Please please. I think we all know that WHO is just trying to show the world that th UN is not a meaningless institution. Hong Kong has a great health system? For who? Too bad their doctors don't know basic isloation procedures. We are entering an era where you won't cure pneumonias with a convenient little drug.
I know...let's create mass hysteria in Beijing, so if SARS really is a problem all the migrant workers can run away from Beijing and infect the rest of the country. And then we can all get rich by selling worthless fask masks that people reuse, take of, leave on a desk, put back on. They make great virus and bacteria incubators