flus in SE Asia
 

What's up with all the flus? Anything to worry about? Planning on travelling to SE Asia at the end of Apr, should we postpone? Unfortunately the more news one watches, the more paranoid one becomes. I must be watching too much news because I don't know whether I'm being reasonable or paranoid!!

You can keep an eye on things at www.who.org, but do keep things in perspective. 20,000 people die in the US each year of the flu...would you be concenred about traveling to the US?

I wouldn't be concerned about isolated cases, short of a major outbreak (which there is no way to predict) I would go. You can certainly plan your itinerary now, but hold off bookings till early March if you are concerned as flu season should be tapering off by then..

I assume the flu you have been reading about is the Avian flu. This is a flu that originates in chickens, ducks and geese. The cases that have occured in SE Asia and China have been transmitted from bird droppings, and there have been no cases of person to person transmission. (It is not transmitted by eating eggs or chicken meat)

The major health organizations like WHO and the cdc monitor these cases carefully because the very deadly flus are ones that make the leap from animals to humans and then mutate for human to human transmission. This has not happened at this point.

So at this pojnt, unless you are going to work on chicken farms, I'd suggest that you are not at risk.

Check out the cdc website for updates on outbreaks www.cdc.gov

cjbryant & Kathie, you're right, thank you for "grounding" me.

It is staggering to realise that:-

During the Sars 'Crisis' Thailand did not have 1 single local case! The only perople with Sars were a handful of people who flew in from Hong Kong. Never a single locally transmitted case. Places like Phuket suffered so much yet again, not 1 case. Malaysia I think again had under 10, it was all handled very efficiently and organised.
During the time people were cancelling their trips to the likes of Thailand Germany and other European countries were recording more cases, eyt no one cancelled their Europe trips because of it.
As someone else mentioned, flu can be a killer anywhere, the US recordsa round 20,000 deaths per year, Australia recorded no more cases than any other year through the whole SARS issue.

I treat News on TV and media in general as a 'guide' to what is going on, I never take it as 'Gospel' truth anymore. You can tell by clicking from News from one Channel to News from another countires News service, the difference is 'interesting', it can also be 'annoying' the differences in the reports.

Re: <i>During the time people were cancelling their trips to the likes of Thailand </i>

One reason might be that Thailand got a lot of media attention about the policy of quaranteening anyone for two weeks that came off an airplane with flu symptons if they had been in a country with SARS. In my case, I decided to fly through Japan rather than Honk Kong at greater expense and requiring more time rather than risk being quarantined in the event of developing a fever on the first day of my trip.

I'm not suggesting that the Thai policy is bad. I actually think it's probably a pretty good policy. But it does affect travel decisions.

You are very right Mike, I flew in from Singapore with a very bad 'cold' the day before all the restrictions came into play, wehat would have happened if I was a day later? I read 'somewhere' that if there are say 390 pax on a 747 on average 4-5 of them will have a high temperature/cold/whatever anyway, quite normal.
My own opinion is that the whole thing got totally confused by the media ( and maybe also official agencies ) and draconian measures were put in place because no one really knew what was going on. At the time I recall thinking that with all the expertise the vagueness was what was worrying. I think Thailand and other countries did what they thought they had no choice but to do.
I think the whole way Sars was handled by the media was a lesson. I recall seeing footage on a rather famous news channel showing people wearing face masks somewhere, a groups of 4 or 5 walking along the street, being observant I noted that the people on either side, behind, and walking in the other direction were 'not', how long the camera team sat there waiting until the prodcuer shouted 'Quick, I can see 4 or 5 people wearing masks, get the film rolling quick!!!.....

I tend too be on the end of the spectrum I dont believe or care about mcuh of anything the news says when it commes too travel warning..

I want too bkk on the day bush declared war.. and I flew threw taipai. people were telling me bring a mask. I said &quot;Please it's only 9 people dead, the news is full of sh--).. OOOPS

Considering how close I live to the U. S. Capitol, the White House and the Pentagon, I'm probably safer travelling just about anywhere than staying home. Do I know how to rationalize or what?! :)

TTT