SARS is still spreading through hong kong, though the specific bug has been identified and there's a treatment for it now. a school reported an outbreak and other new cases have been in the news lately. i keep seeing more and more people wearing those surgical masks -- it used to be for the traffic pollution around some of the busier areas, but now people are wearing them indoors, on the trains and in other public places.
today my teacher wore a mask throughout the entire class. she said it was for our protection, in case she's got the bug (the university's medical school has a few cases among the faculty). her voice was kind of muffled and it looked insane at first, but we got used to it. crazy.
Posted by cce at March 25, 2003 11:25 PM | TrackBackHello Chris.
Funny how I found your page when doing a casual
search on ShenZhen and SARS.
I'll be attending the SunNetwork conference in
Shanghai on the 8th and 9th of April and have
a number of customer visits to do in ShenZhen
around the 11th.
I wasn't aware that the true, root cause of
SARS was found and that there was a valid
treatment (being viral, I'm not sure mass
treatments would scale -- though treating
the symptoms helps psychologically).
Anyhow, I need to do more research to ease
the concerns of my wife and friends. I'd
appreciate any additional feedback you have,
as someone who's in the middle of a media
reported hot zone.
Regards,
Chris Emura
Engineering Manager, Availability Products Group
Sun Microsystems
Hello Chris:
It seems I was wrong -- I just checked the CDC and WHO sites and they say that the cause has not yet been identified. I believe my misunderstanding stemmed from preliminary reports in the local newspapers that SARS was in the paramyxovirus family, which was proven wrong Monday:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,58209,00.html
What I'd heard about treatments working on people was from friends and family -- I can't find an article about it right now. I assume they were just general treatments to help people get over severe flu symptoms, since SARS isn't always fatal.
If you're going to go to Shenzhen, you should be fine as long as you take some precautions (wear a mask on public transport) -- the way I understand it is that an infected person would have to cough on you to get it. I took the train with three friends to Shenzhen just last Friday to attend a crowded concert (in a pretty swanky club, so perhaps infected people couldn't afford to get in) and didn't wear a mask. The fears around here seem to have heated up since then, however, and now most of my friends would probably tell me that was a dumb thing to do.
I haven't heard of any cases in Shanghai, so you should be fine there. The situation will surely have changed (for better or worse) by 11 April, so I'd recommend you re-evaluate your plans to go to Shenzhen once you get to China for the conference. Of course if you want to remove the risk altogether by not traveling right now, that would the safest thing to do. But if you were to visit Shenzhen today, I'd say you'd still be fine.
Chris