EV71 Outbreak In China Sparks Fears For Olympics

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."

When tourists return to their home contries...

[Picass0]

... they could trigger a nice little pandemic.

Sweet dreams.

Consideration

[Narpak]

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.

Perspective Comments

[mrbluze]

Killed 20 children. How many children are there in China? or Peking?

How many car accidents were there, or murders. Who cares, basically.

Nerd/News/Importance Factor Zero.

Re:Should I be scared ...

[mrbluze]

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:Conspiracy comments in...

[OMNIpotusCOM]

The sad thing about that comment is that several months ago China allowed US beef [reuters.com] back into the country after some debacle early on. Less than a month after the allowed it they turned around and banned it again because of the levels of spinal material (or some such thing) in the beef. They were afraid of BSE (mad cow disease) and their levels that they wanted were way lower than what the US or even Canada accepted, so US beef is banned again (though you can get it fairly easily through other channels). While I have no example of what you're saying being true or false, it would be very ironic if it was true with the BSE story in mind.

Re:Should I be scared ...

[piojo]

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.

Can be said better?

[ghostbar38]

It's plain propaganda... Remember that there's people in China attacking CNN by the position they took about the Olympics and this is obviously a way to punch back from CNN... Not that I'm pro-China but is obvious the intentions of CNN.

Re:Should I be scared ...

[Kopiok]

Think he's ever been in a car?

Re:news for nerds...

[justinlee37]

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.

Re:Let's cancel the olympics

[Ninjaesque One]

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.

Re:Should I be scared ...

[piojo]

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:What could go wrong

[hackingbear]

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.

Re:What could go wrong

[frovingslosh]

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 higher than the death rate of the Spanish Flu.). But that's far from the only problem. Those affected with polio like symptoms and other serious problems are likely to number far greater. And any statement that it is mild in adults should alarm any thoughtful person; how many adults who pick up the virus and only show a "mild" reaction will be likely to carry it back home, rather than wait out an extended stay in China? A "mild in adults but deadly in children and the elderly" virus is just the thing to cause a pandemic.

You hit the nail on the head with the pollution issue. It is likely to be a health issue. And so anyone who does pick up the virus and show "mild" symptoms is even more likely to just attribute it to the pollution and not stay around the polluted city for an extended stay. So the virus spreads, but people can claim "Oh, I though I was just sick from the pollution". Gee, who could have seen this coming?

Yea, the US government are real scum and villains too. Talk about off-topic. But I don't see how this makes China any better. I see very little chance that they will react properly if they find there is a growing problem, based on their past record and the loss of face that any health provisions during the Olympics would cause.

There is FUD, and then there is common sense. Those who just dismiss all problems as the former lack the latter.

Re:Let's cancel the olympics

[giminy]

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 the Carpenter happens to be good at shot-put, so let him represent our country as an average citizen." I'd honestly watch them if it were amateur athletes competing again -- it's fun to think that, with enough working out in my spare time, I too could be an olympic cyclist. Now it's just mega-million athletes wearing logos from a shoe manufacturer that uses slave labor to make the money...not exactly something to be proud of.

Re:Can be said better?

[dwater]

Well, I'm glad someone realises it....as a westerner living in China, I find the blatant bias of the western media disgusting.

Re:Let's cancel the olympics

[Rich0]

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?