it somehow crept up on me sooner than i expected, but sophie's on a plane to london now for her dad's birthday. i'm sitting at home looking at a pile of emails, the latest issue of the economist, and some scarier recent news reports on my favorite disease. even folk dancing clases aren't safe anymore. Youth and Fitness Offer Little Defense Against Disease declares the new york times, but i'm still a dozen years younger than the five new SARS deaths "aged 35 to 52" last weekend. when a 23 year-old non-chronically-diseased person dies, i'll start getting really scared, but i'm still holding on to hemlock's view that a 4% fatality rate isn't so bad as long as i stay away from hospitals and infected areas. it's even easier to know where exactly those infected areas are since they published the addresses of SARS patients in this sunday's SCMP.
still, i don't wish to sound too cavalier about this (and get more concerned emails from my parents). i bought medical insurance last week, giving me a little piece of mind. it's been 10 days since i got the policy and i haven't had a fever yet, so i'm out of "pre-existing condition" territory now and should be fully protected against SARS (up to two million dollars) if it hits.
as i said, sophie's gone, and it seems a waste of the time i've got left in asia to just sit here in the apartment until she returns. hiking around the rural areas of hong kong seems iffy, and with SARS cases reported all the way from inner mongolia down to hunan, sichuan, and guangxi, travel to the mainland is right out. thailand and malaysia are blocked by restrictions on visitors from hong kong. taiwan, however, seems like a good spot for a 10-day getaway, and i've been reading my taiwan guidebook a lot in the past couple days, as well as eyeing the latest bargain fares for the quick 1.5-hour hop to taipei. tomorrow morning i'll figure out if the whole thing is feasible economically and get some suggestions on neighborhoods to poke around from the family.
in other news, the old 'hood was featured in another nytimes article for its wondrous ethnic diversity. it's weird reading a newspaper description of your hometown as having "cosmopolitan chic" and being a model of inclusiveness (races, ethnicities, gay families, etc). i suppose this explains in part why one of the first things that struck me when i got to college was how often i'd hear offhand racist remarks coming from my fellow suburban white kids. most of them had just never grown up around minorities, while my high school had a "Playa's Ball" in addition to the prom each year.
man, i should've gone to the Playa's Ball. that would have been phatty.
Posted by cce at April 15, 2003 02:21 AM | TrackBackWeirdly enough, we had a Playa's Ball at CMU also... I never went though, because I'm a playa hata, and on their posters they said "no playa hatas allowed." Curses.
Posted by: Mike at April 15, 2003 02:45 AMDon't even get me started on playas. No kidding, I always wanted to wear an entirely white outfit. White suit, white shirt, white shoes, white hat with a black feather, a nice white cane...booyakasha! Respect. The white man's racism always kept me from showing my true playa skillz. Peace.
Posted by: manning at April 15, 2003 03:16 PMbooyakasha? You've been watching too much Ali G eh?
Posted by: chris at April 15, 2003 04:33 PMHi Chris, I've been keeping an eye on your blog for a "man on the ground" view of SARS in Asia. I'm in SoCal and have been thinking about the 4% mortality rate which I've read about and which you referenced.
I'm not sure how this figure is being derived, but I've played with the WHO numbers myself and come up with a higher figure. Rather than looking at deaths as a percentage of infectees (some of whom will in all likelyhood die) I've been tracking it as a percentage of what I call "resolved" cases. That is, the patient either recovered or died. Thought I would share my thoughts with you.
According to the 4/16 WHO report, there are 3293 reported cases of SARS to date. Of them, 159 have died and 1548 have recovered. Total resolved cases would be 1707 (159+1548) and the mortality rate, as I humbly compute it, would be 9.32%. This has risen over the last week from 7.67% on 4/10.
Interesting to look at the activity over the last week as well. In the six days since 4/10 (the first day WHO reported "recovered" patients) there have been 48 deaths and 211 recoveries. So over the last week (roughly) 18.54% (48/48+211) of the "resolved" cases have ended in the death of the patient.
I'll be happy to post any comments you have on my blog if you send them to me by email, as I don't have commenting funcionality installed at this time.
Ed
Thanks for that, Ed, I hadn't looked at the numbers that way (or at least that's not the spin the HK gov't has been using) -- all I'm hearing is reassurances from Tung Chee-Hwa and the like that available treatments right now are very good, 95% success rate, etc. The way you put it, it certainly doesn't sound good, and I'll be checking your blog when I get back from Taiwan...
Posted by: chris at April 17, 2003 09:29 AMHi Chris.
My URL will be changing to www.ed-op.com shortly. I will be fighting with setting up Moveabletype on a new domain on a new host, so I dont know how well this will go. I will be in touch when all is in place, so kindly keep in touch and let me know if it is working for you. My thanks in advance if you would keep track of both emoss.blogspot.com and www.ed-op.com for a couple of days.
Perhaps it is an imposition to ask you to check on this and email me at emoss@gate.net, but I will be happy to reciprocate if possible. Thanks again, and best wishes for your time in HK.
BTW, I gather you have spent some time in Germany. I spent about 6 months in Berlin between 1990 and 1998. Excuse me if its off thread, but how long did you spend there?
Warm regards
Ed
what does a girl wear to a playas ball? i have togo to one and i see you are talking about it
Posted by: michelle at December 28, 2003 05:08 PM