quote:
Originally posted by Papercut Fun:
I'm not even sure what the Teabag topics are these days, but I wanted to ask this on our rambling thread:
Is anyone else out there living in a place where SARS is an issue? Have you heard of this thing: Severe Accute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Started in China and now has my hometown Toronto, Canada in the grips of fear. News stories make it look like we all walk around wearing masks which is quite a stretch. But it's crushing tourism here. The play I do every night ""The Mousetrap"" is hurting as American bustours are cancelling by the...uh...busload. A full house is about 150 people and we had maybe 20 at each show on Saturday night when we usually pack the place.
SARS stinks. It's the only disease I've heard of where 200 deaths worldwide can be considered an ""epidemic"". I mean, how many people do we lose in a good year from the flu or pnemonia? 1,000? 1,500?
And now we're battoning down the hatches for another round of the mosquito carrying West Nile virus. Saddam doesn't need biological weapons, Mother Nature seems to be doing a pretty good job on her own.
Well I'll just read Lucifer. It'll make me happy.
I'm living in the thick of SARS. Almost 120 people have died here in HK, more than anywhere else - 12 died on the weekend.
Its extremely depressing. The economy here has been hit in the gut - tourism has dried up, and all major deals seem to be on hold.
Setting aside job losses and a lack of profits, the sheer sense of panic is palpable - 80% of people are wearing ineffective surgical masks as if they are security blankets (I saw one guy walking down the street with a hole cut into his mask for his ciagrette!).
People might rationalise it by a comparison to the flu or regular pneumonia. The issue though is that we are only in the first wave of contagion, which is typically followed by a much larger wave. There is no cure, and no one is even sure if its airborne.
The only consolation, if it is one at all, is that the majority of people who have died had already got some sort of illness or depressed immunity system, were old, or were medical workers who were constantly exposed to the bug.
HK isn't much fun at the moment.
