| Lorenzo, Let's start by saying that no one can predict what will happen six months from now! People will tell you that everything is fine in Shanghai at the moment, and it probably is. But diseases respect no city boundaries, as the SAR outbreak has illustrated so well. The problem areas right now are in Beijing and Taiwan, but that is not to say the disease will not take every opportunity to spread to other areas. http://www.who.int/csr/sars/country/2003_05_24a/en/ http://www.crienglish.com/144/2003-5-25/2@10563.htm It is believed that SARS, like the flu, usually take a break during the summer. So the fact that the disease appears to be abating over the last four weeks is not a good indicator of how well the public health system has been coping with it. If you are worried about SARS affecting your kids, rest assured SARS is not as contagious as the flu, and very few people catch it -- though a large number of people who catch it do die (esp people who are 60 or over, or medical professionals who were exposed to a large amount of the virus.) That said, SARS is expected to make a come back in the fall. Who knows how much it will have mutated, and how well the public health system will be able to deal with it? No vaccine will be available by then. Does that mean that your kids will be better off staying at home? May be. But war and pestilence can happen everywhere. If you are going to be in China this winter, and assuming that many cities in both China and abroad will once again resume various types of control on the movement of people (home quarantine, temperature checks), it might be better to keep your family close to you. Of course, you should make contingency plans as well. |
SARS Almost Goes to an End