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EV71 Outbreak In China Sparks Fears For Olympics

Posted by timothy on Sat May 03, 2008 06:45 PM
from the not-funny-at-all dept.
Medicine
OMNIpotusCOM writes "CNN is reporting an outbreak of Enterovirus 71 (or EV71), that has affected more than 3700 children and killed over 20, is creating concern for the visitors and athletes expected for the Beijing Olympics in August. The virus can cause 'poliolike paralysis,' according to the article."
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Submission: Outbreak in China sparks fears for Olympics by OMNIpotusCOM (1230884)
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  • 5... 4... 3...
  • ...it only affects Tibetans {ducks head}
         

  • 28 days later (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i'd hate to see what happens 28 days later
  • ... they could trigger a nice little pandemic.

    Sweet dreams.

  • That's okay (Score:5, Funny)

    by Fear the Clam (230933) on Saturday May 03 2008, @07:24PM (#23287572)
    I'm sure the Chinese have some sort of perfectly safe medicine for this.
    • ... and it's either lead-coated, or lead-based, depending on the level of effectiveness required.

  • Consideration (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Narpak (961733) on Saturday May 03 2008, @07:27PM (#23287588)
    I guess a gathering of people from all over the world, who stay for a while then go back home, does provide a certain degree of danger when it comes to spreading any type of contagious disease.
  • Why do these illnesses always spring up in China first? Is there a severe lack of hygiene there, or something?
    • Probably a combination of less than North American standard of hygiene, as well as sheer probability. Pick a random person on Earth to infect with a zombie virus. 1/6th chance you'll end up with a mainland Chinese zombie.

    • Re:Always China (Score:5, Informative)

      by v1 (525388) on Saturday May 03 2008, @08:10PM (#23287840) Homepage Journal
      virus crossover can occur when one species can be infected by viruses from more than one other species. Chickens can get avian type viruses. Humans can get human type viruses. Pigs, lucky them, can get some of both. And in china it's common to raise pigs and chickens together.

      Perfect breeding ground for avian-to-human crossover viruses. And crossover evolution works a lot faster than regular evolution.

      • And crossover evolution works a lot faster than regular evolution.

        I didn't know that. When I get home, I'm going to download CrossOver, and speed up my email.
      • One could also say the same of Indian restaurants. Shitting lava the next day is no laughing matter!

  • What could go wrong (Score:4, Interesting)

    by frovingslosh (582462) on Saturday May 03 2008, @07:37PM (#23287638)
    So we'll soon have hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world traveling into a very densely populated area with a deadly virus which has no vaccine available (which hardy matters since the people would be unlikely to get vaccinated) and then all roughly at the same time traveling back across the globe. Add to this China's documented sanitary and even pollution problems. And a government with a history of hiding facts that might impact it financially or even just embarrass it. What could go wrong? Lets just pretend we didn't see this coming and act surprised when the pandemic hits.

    • So we'll soon have hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world traveling into a very densely populated area

      This has been a problem in very rural China. Likely there will be few tourists or Olympic travelers even remotely exposed.

      with a deadly virus which has no vaccine available

      possibly true to very low values of "deadly" - it's fairly mild in adults.

      Add to this China's documented sanitary [problems]

      in rural villages, yes, this is a issue for those living there ...

      and even pollution p

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by frovingslosh (582462)
        Your reassurance that this is limited to villages is pretty lame. Unless you want everyone to believe that all of the food that will be consumed at the Olympics will actually be produced in Beijing and not in those remote villages. I expect there to be a serious flow of food, people and viruses between the remote villages and Beijing.

        Your discounting of the deadliness of this virus is also not very reassuring. The percentage of deaths of those affected is high enough to cause me concern (perhaps even high

    • Re:What could go wrong (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hackingbear (988354) on Saturday May 03 2008, @10:04PM (#23288450)
      After the SARS outbreaks in 2003, China has been much more open on reporting outbreaks of transmissive diseases. The suppression of SARS taught them that openness would not cause panic but solve it. We just hope they apply the lesson during the Olympics and to other areas of governing.

  • John Titor... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ArsenneLupin (766289) on Saturday May 03 2008, @07:50PM (#23287716)
    ... was right after all!

    Torino was the last (summer) olympics of human history.

    But this is EV71's merit, not Tibet's merit!

  • The International Symposium of Computer Architecture is in China next month. This is more relevant to slashdotters than the Olympics.

  • Let's cancel the olympics (Score:5, Interesting)

    by boyko.at.netqos (1024767) on Saturday May 03 2008, @07:54PM (#23287734)
    Let's cancel the olympics.

    No, seriously.

    The Olympics exists for two purposes - to allow athletes to compete against others around the world for sport and to promote the idea of international competition taking the form of athletic events instead of warfare. To promote sport and to promote peace.

    In the case of the former, per-sport international athletics associations can more than supplant the role.

    In the case of the latter, no one can take a look at the bloody history of the 20th and early 21st centuries since the modern olympics were founded and believe that the Olympics has been terribly successful at promoting peace.

    Instead, what ends up is that every two years (now that they're staggered) there's a massive orgy of corruption and controversy; and from time to time we have to put up with someone like China or Nazi Germany hosting - or sometimes the U.S. will boycott Moscow or Moscow will boycott the U.S...

    I think it's time to get rid of the Olympics.
    • /signed

      It's become way too political, and it never was supposed to be. The main reason China was even chosen was politics, to show that they were 'coming out' into the world as a good citizen.
    • But every few Olympics, we have someone like South Korea hosting, and dictatorships get weakened. Is South Korea an extreme? Perhaps. Are they an isolated case, and will they be an isolated case in the future? I think not.
    • Just to be a pissant, and carry on your point in a much more extreme fashion (in a slightly Ambrose Bierce-y fashion):

      Olympics: An intermittent event which is used by highly evolved nations pretending they honour the value of each other's citizen, which lasts for a couple of weeks separated by long periods of the subjugation, dehumanisation, and murder of those same citizens. Not to be confused with treaties or peace accords, which lack the same level of athleticism.

      • Re:Let's cancel the olympics (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Mr. Picklesworth (931427) on Saturday May 03 2008, @09:24PM (#23288264) Homepage

        No one is forcing you to attend.
        Tax money going to ludicrously expensive, mostly worthless (except for the builder) buildings would say otherwise. Speed skating, for example, is a sport I have come to despise simply because of how much public money is going into a speed skating rink nobody will ever use again. Why the hell can't the speed skaters accept a challenge and skate on a rink that isn't gold plated for their luxury, hm?

        Compared to the vast majority of what organized groups of people do, it's one of the few good things.
        So first you accept it's all a scheme to earn money and promote government corruption, then you say that it's "one of the few good things". I think this worldwide fellowship thing can be promoted in a way that doesn't require athletic red carpets, and doesn't implicitly piss somebody off.

        People who live in the host location never like the Olympics. With that simple fact, we can clearly see Something Is Wrong.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by giminy (94188)
          I think this worldwide fellowship thing can be promoted in a way that doesn't require athletic red carpets, and doesn't implicitly piss somebody off.

          Amen to that. It used to be that olympic athletes held "amateur status," -- they weren't allowed to accept any form of payment for their sport. Jim Thorpe [wikipedia.org] had his medals stripped because he got paid to play baseball in the *minor leagues*, which barely paid to put food on his table.

          Overcompetition killed the olympics. The Olympics used to basically be, "Bob

          • Re:Let's cancel the olympics (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Rich0 (548339) on Sunday May 04 2008, @07:34AM (#23290672) Homepage
            If we'd judge everything on financial grounds we'd live in a world that is as boring as the shitty projects most of us work on. (Yeah sure, your work of course is exciting and you come home filled with joy and pleasure every day.)

              Let's not throw away money. But OTOH, let's NOT die "sad but rich".

            The only problem with this logic is that you want to compel under threat of force individuals to contribute to the building of Colosseums. That's what taxes are - they're not some kind of charity. Choose not to pay them and you'll see the not-so-nice side very quickly.

            I'm not some kind of anti-tax nut - taxes are certainly essential to run the primary functions of government which are essential. I'm not entirely opposed to some aspects of social justice as well within reason. However, when you're talking about building sports megacomplexes why not let those who make the money spend the money? Just have the International Olympic Organization fund the construction of the facilities they use (or choose to use existing facilities). They can recoup those costs through ticket sales and television rights. They'll need to regulate their spending so that they break even.

            As soon as you make the organization that runs the olympics pay for the olympics you'll start to see them question whether we need events that nobody actually watches, and whether the facilities REALLY need to be built to a given standard. You'll also see them asking questions like - why do all the events have to be held at the same time in the same place? Why not just host them all over the place at various times durning the year and just use existing facilities?
  • Whenever I get a disease from China, I'm hungry for another global pandemic like, thirty minutes later.

  • Journalist Makes Baseless Speculation, News At 11 (Score:5, Informative)

    by rsmith-mac (639075) on Saturday May 03 2008, @08:06PM (#23287814)

    From Wikipedia, Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease [wikipedia.org] the disease that results from this virus:

    HFMD usually affects infants and children, and is quite common. It is highly contagious and is spread through direct contact with the mucus, saliva, or feces of an infected person. It typically occurs in small epidemics in nursery schools or kindergartens, usually during the summer and autumn months. The usual incubation period is 3-7 days. It is extremely uncommon in adults, however still a possibility. Most adults have strong enough immune systems to utterly defeat the virus...

    And outbreaks in April alone:

    1. Outbreak at Lebanon Valley College, Annville, PA, USA 2. Outbreak in South Portland, ME, USA Infection may have spread to an isolated section of Westbrook, ME, as well 3. Outbreak in Auckland, NZ. 4. Reported in Santa Clara County, California, USA 5. Late March - mid April: 2,600 cases reported in Singapore, no serious cases; 1000 cases reported in the week of 14 - 20 April.[1] 6. Late April: it is reported in the chinese website (sina.com.cn) that in Fuyan, Provinz Anhui, 19 dead. 7. Late April: San Francisco, CA nursery schools.

    Now I'm not saying it's of absolutely no concern, but it's not as if there's some massive killer disease rampaging through China. The average adult has nothing to worry about, and even in children the effects are rather mild with appropriate medical care. This will burn itself out well before the Olympics, and in a year no one will remember it; use some common sense here. If you want to avoid the Olympics (or encourage others to do so) there are much better reasons than this.

    • Try harder, read the whole sentence on CNN, and make sure that your source doesn't end up proving you wrong.

      Enterovirus 71 (EV71) [wikipedia.org]

      Enterovirus 71 (EV71)infection may be asymptomatic or may cause diarrhea, rashes, and hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD). However, EV71 also has the potential to cause severe neurological disease. To date, little is known about the molecular mechanisms of host response to EV71 infection. It is stated in [4] that: "EV71 infection led to increases in the level of mRNAs encoding chemokines, proteins involved in protein degradation, complement proteins, and proapoptotis proteins."

      "Enterovirus 71 (EV71), one of the major causative agents for hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD), is sometimes associated with severe central nervous system diseases. In 1997, in Malaysia and Japan, and in 1998 in Taiwan, there were HFMD epidemics involving sudden deaths among young children, and EV71 was isolated from the HFMD patients, including the fatal cases. The nucleotide sequences of each EV71 isolate were determined and compared by phylogenetical analysis. EV71 strains from previously reported epidemics belonged to genotype A-1, while those from recent epidemics could be divided into two genotypes, A-2 and B

  • There actually is an antiviral which I expect would be active against this virus -- Pleconaril [wikipedia.org]. Unfortunately, it has not been approved, and I haven't heard of much work being done with it after Phase II trials finished.

    That being said, this particular virus really isn't a danger to healthy adults, mostly to children and the immuno-suppressed.

  • In that part of the world people, ducks and pigs live in close proximity which facilitates the exchange of viruses. They use human waste as fertilizer also. This is why the origin of most flu viruses begins there. I still remember the Hong Kong flu. Three days of feeling like death warmed over for me and most of my friends, took a month to only need a normal amount of sleep after getting over it.

    • Re:Should I be scared ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by piojo (995934) on Saturday May 03 2008, @07:59PM (#23287766)

      Should I be scared... of a whopping 0.5% chance of death?
      That's probably a hundred or a thousand times riskier than anything you've ever done.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Kopiok (898028)
        Think he's ever been in a car?

        • Re:Should I be scared ... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by piojo (995934) on Saturday May 03 2008, @08:51PM (#23288116)
          Suppose that driving carries a 0.005% chance of death, and that a person drives an average of 2.5 times per day for 10 years. This person has a 45% chance of dying in a car accident during those years. Because this calculation is wrong by more than one order of magnitude, driving must actually carry less than 0.0005% of death. I rest my case.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by piojo (995934)
              You're right, as was the poster above you. My math was dead wrong. But this isn't:

              Driving 9125 times with a 0.005% chance of death each time, the probability of living is
              0.99995^9125 = 0.63

              So, you've got a 37% chance of dying. This is obviously still not the correct percentage. If we say that there is only a 0.0005% chance of dying, the calculation yields a 4.4% chance of death. Still too much. So, even though I suck at math, driving is more than 1000x safer than an activity which causes 0.5% death.

              And you'

            • Re:Should I be scared ... (Score:5, Informative)

              by bonhomme_de_neige (711691) on Saturday May 03 2008, @10:16PM (#23288522) Homepage
              His/her maths is almost correct (i.e. wrong, but not enough to make his point invalid).

              The calculation above doesn't take into account the fact that to die in a car crash on your second day (e.g. 5th drive), implies you already didn't die on the first day, so the actual chance of that is p*(1-p)^4, where p = 0.005% or whatever.

              A quick spreadsheet exercise projecting this for 9125 drives (10 years @ 2.5 drives per day) shows the probability of death during the 10 years is 36.6%.

              Another way to approach the problem that doesn't need either a spreadsheet or a geometric progression trick is to say that the probability of dying in this way during the 10 years is (1 - probability of not dying in that time). The probability of doing all that driving and surviving is (1 - p)^(9125), which = 63.4% when p = 0.005. (1 - 63.4%) = 36.6% giving the same answer as above.

              However this doesn't change the fact that piojo's argument is 100% correct that the chance of death per drive must average lower than 0.0005%, as the 36% per 10 years rate is way too high.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mrbluze (1034940)

        You shouldn't be worried that you might die, but you should be worried that people will die.
        I know! Thousands of people are dying around the world every day and nobody seems to be doing anything about it!. It's a travesty!

    • Re:news for nerds... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by justinlee37 (993373) on Saturday May 03 2008, @08:17PM (#23287890)
      I'm sorry, I think "news for nerds, stuff that matters" covers medicine, politics, and social sciences. Try to stop clicking your ball-point pen and snapping your suspenders in unbridled rage whenever someone suggests that something besides computers is nerdy, you're making the rest of us look like idiots.
    • they wipe their ass. then they DON'T wash their hands. Then they touch their mouth. and they just walk around in the dirt with no shoes.

      not washing hands or having the access to soap and fresh running water is how these things become an epidemic.

      cholera, rhinovirus, and this enterovirus all spread that way.

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