Coronavirus - International stories and thoughts

How vulnerable are tourists to this disease? Six members of my family ( 3 are children under age 12) are traveling to Beijing and several other cities and sites in March. Reservations are booked, tickets paid for and visas in hand. Should I be concerned they could be exposed?

 

The risks should not be too high in Beijing. Beijing recently opened Daxing Airport on the west side of Beijing to handle all domestic air travel through the capital, and a few regional routes. The international airport is on the east side of Beijing. So sick people flying in from Wuhan would be more likely to fly in through DAX, and not PEK. Beijing will have the resources to deal with the problem, and will be on the lookout for sick people in the tourist areas. Far western cities like Xi'an (Terracotta Army) should be fairly safe. Cities on the eastern coast should be reasonably safe. Have them wear an N-95 mask (available at Home Depot, I believe) when in crowded public areas, and try to avoid buses and other crowded forms of transportation. Bring anti-bacterial hand wash. Don't eat uncooked food (like salad), don't order American dishes (like hamburger-you'll be disappointed), and check the seal on your water bottle (and brush your teeth with bottle water only) to make sure it hasn't been refilled. If you stay at a western hotel, you'll be fine with the food there. Are they staying in western hotels or more affordable local hotels? The Residence Inns and Holiday Inns in Chinese cities are a world nicer than what they are here (usually high rise buildings), and the prices are lower. In many places, you can stay at a Westin or Intercontinental for less than $150 a night. Most Marriott properties and Holiday Inns are $75-90 a night, unless they are at the airport or at a major tourist location. If your hotel is $50 a night or less, you might be in for some surprises.

 

Those people eat the funkiest things on the planet.
Good luck in changing their habits.

 

Thanks, Chem. They will be at the Legendale in Beijing for 4 nights then moving to 2 other cities for another week. I don't recall the names of the 2 cities they will visit but I know they are seeing the Great Wall and the mausoleum with the terra cotta soldiers among other places. They will be in country about 12 days.

I would so like to go with them. China was on my bucket list for many years, but I can no longer fly or travel those distances. My wings are clipped : (

 

Yeah, their bizarre animal diets make them a breeding ground for diseases.

 

OMG, time to hoard beans, bullets, and toilet paper!!!!!!!! The stock market was hit hard today by the common cold. Seriously. Do you know the flu this year since October has killed 10,000 more people than this bug? That's not a typo. In the US alone, 10x as many people died from the flu since October 1, 2019 than this cold has infected globally. Snowflakes, the whole lot of the world.

So this has the makings of the next SARS, which killed....drum roll....800 people globally in 2003. Not 800 million people, 800 people. Fewer than a typical bingo game holds. That's a 3rd of the flu deaths in the US in the last 2.5 months. To put this in perspective folks, the Spanish Flu of 1913 killed 25,000,000 worldwide, 1% of the global population. Now that's a true pandemic. Today, we go ballistic when 10 people die from a respiratory infection that is now communicable between people. Shocker. Measles by comparison is far scarier and it hardly illicit a response. To see an equivalent amount of deaths like in the Spanish Flu epidemic, we'd have to reach over 70,000,000 deaths worldwide.

 

Laugh if you like, but that Civet cat was killed on street alley's in China.

 

The problem is that these viruses have the potential to kill tens of millions of people.

People are generally smarter about it now than they used to be, so that should make it far less likely. In 1918, they were doing some kind of fundraising or promotional drive for WWI (maybe with an exhibition of the Liberty Bell), and scientists insisted that the mayor cancel the event after a large number of people had come down with the flu (Swine Flu). The mayor refused, and there was an immediate epidemic in the city within a week. All of the soldiers traveling back from the war increased the spread of the flu.

That's why they make a big deal about the deaths--because no one knows what the total will be until it's over.

 

Five-star hotel--nice! The terra cotta soldiers are in Xi'an, towards central China (but far from Wuhan).

My wings are almost worn out, but I still have to travel for work. I'll be headed to China in the not-too-distant future. I'm fairly certain I won't see any tourist sites, though.

 

And? Someone tonight in the US ran over a possum and then threw it into a stew.
Not much of a difference. Different types of dead animal, but some random dead animal nonetheless.

 

Did patient zero really catch new Chinese virus by eating infected bat soup? It’s actually perfectly possible



A group of Chinese scientists today reported that the likely source of the deadly 2019‐nCoV virus is snakes, based on genetic analysis. However, grisly images from a Chinese restaurant suggest bats may also be on the menu.

Their findings were fast-tracked to publication yesterday in the Journal of Medical Virology, and report that infected people were exposed to various wildlife species at the market, where live poultry, seafood, bats and snakes among others, were present.

A detailed genetic analysis of 2019‐nCoV revealed that it is a new strain which seems to be a mixture of two other coronaviruses; one of which is from bats and another unknown strain. The group presented evidence that the last place the virus resided before hitting humans was a snake species, based on certain biological markers in the virus’s surface proteins. These proteins are what allow viruses to invade host cells, and the mutated form is allowing 2019‐nCoV to easily attack human cells.....

Different cultures eat exotic foods, and Chinese people are well known for having a taste for some meats that might raise eyebrows or even churn stomachs. But bat soup?! Amazingly, it is apparently very popular in China, and considered a delicacy there.
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Sounds like the dang Chinese are getting this mess from eating bat soup. Trump might have to get involved if this starts spreading even more rapidly.

 

Rednecks don't live long either.