SARS

Beijing’s SARS lockdown taught my children resilience. Your covid kids will likely be fine

ReflexionesSocial, ,

Many parents are filled with angst as they prepare for their children to exit a year of pandemic isolation: Will it be okay to send them to school, per the recent recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? Will school feel like school if students are masked and can’t trade snacks? Will children’s development be impaired by nearly a year of seeing few friends?

With 20-20 hindsight, I can provide some reassurance, because my kids were 8 and 10 when SARS hit Beijing nearly two decades ago, shutting down the city for months: Your children will likely be fine, and maybe even better as human beings, for having lived through this tragic experience.…  Seguir leyendo »

An employee gives out hand sanitizer to a girl in Zhongshan Park on Tuesday in Wuhan, China. (Getty Images)

MundoAsia, , , ,

The H5N1 avian influenza outbreak in 1996, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003-2004 and now covid-19 were all first detected in China. Some accounts even claim that a precursor to the 1918 influenza pandemic, the worst in modern history, first appeared in China.

Why do so many highly infectious diseases appear to start their deadly spread in China?

Many recent articles have honed in on the policy errors of China’s authoritarian political system. As the novel coronavirus began to sweep across the United States, President Trump sought to directly implicate Beijing by referring to “the Chinese virus,” instead of its technical designation, SARS-COV-2.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia, , ,

A lire les nouvelles des premiers jours du confinement en France, il semble que le monde ait basculé dans une nouvelle époque: l’Europe est l’épicentre d’une pandémie majeure, les Etats-Unis s’y préparent en ordre dispersé et la Chine, qui a contrôlé cette épidémie en quelques mois par des mesures massives, envoie son aide au reste du monde sous la forme de masques, de respirateurs et de médecins. La déclaration martiale du président de la République donne à ces premiers jours de «guerre» des airs de 1914: nous ne savons pas combien de temps durera la mobilisation, mais nous savons qu’elle a déjà commencé à bouleverser l’ordre du monde.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalSalud Pública, , , ,

On May 9, the World Health Organization stopped short of calling Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, a global health emergency. That's a good thing.

In the 2 1/2 years since it was first identified, MERS has had a case fatality rate of about 30%, which sounds alarming. But during that period, there have been only 594 confirmed cases. Moreover, extensive surveillance in Saudi Arabia has shown that many people infected with the virus never showed symptoms, which means the fatality rate is actually far lower.

Still, case numbers have shot up in recent weeks. And the first two infections in the United States were recently reported, both of them in healthcare workers who flew in from Saudi Arabia.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalSalud Pública, , ,

In the early hours of March 15, 2003, I was awakened by a telephone call at my home in Geneva from the infectious disease duty officer of the World Health Organization, who had just received a call from the health authorities in Singapore.

He said that a doctor in the city-state who had been treating patients with the unusual respiratory disease that we were monitoring had become ill with the same symptoms while flying back from a medical conference in New York. His plane was due to stop in Frankfurt.

Our first step was to alert the German health authorities and advise them to consider taking the doctor off the plane to reduce exposure to other passengers, and to put him under immediate medical supervision.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalSalud Pública, , ,

I can’t remember how many friends had lost their jobs before me, perhaps it was 11 or 12. I do recall that I was handed my notice three days after our weekly work drinks, which we had to move from an indoor bar in Hong Kong’s Central district to an outside venue in Happy Valley as some of my friends feared we’d be exposed to SARS indoors.

The horrific events of 9/11 only a year and a half earlier had already caused the Dow to drop just over 14 percent, losing $1.2 trillion and leaving the Asian Tiger economies flattened. When SARS seized this city in March 2003 it was attacking not only a vulnerable population but also a fragile economy.…  Seguir leyendo »