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I’ve been looking forward to going back to China during my summer between high school and college for over a year now, and having already gotten my dad to book the tickets for my brother and myself, believed our plans to be quite concrete.
Unfortunately my relatives (most especially my maternal grandparents who were actually here with us until February) are quite against our coming because of the out-of-proportion scare over there. Apparently over there, the news reports the U.S. as being one of the most affected and dangerous H1N1 capitals of the world, with numbers and sick counts being reported to Chinese citizens round the clock.
Spreak of H1N1 in the US as of June 20, 2009; source: CDC - http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/
On the other hand, here in the U.S., at least as I myself have observed, there is little to no hype on the slight joke of “Swine Flu”. Sure, at one point the surgical masks all got sold out at the stores and people were freaked and the CDC raised the pandemic alert to a Phase 6, but this is because of the level on contagiousness.1
WHO’s decision to raise the pandemic alert level to Phase 6 is a reflection of the spread of the virus, not the severity of illness caused by the virus.
- CDC
Outbreaks have been reported in just about all the states and many countries across the world. As of 26 June, 2009 the WHO reports 1089 cases in China with 0 deaths and 21449 cases in the United States with 87 deaths.
At this time, there are few cases and no deaths reported in people older than 64 years old, which is unusual when compared with seasonal flu.
- CDC
H1N1 is much less dangerous than the seasonal flu.2
Current H1N1situation in China as of June 12, 2009; source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:H1N1_China_map_by_confirmed_cases.svg
Unfortunately, my aunt in Guangdoing seems to be in the thick of all the cases in China. As a teacher there, her school is closing early for the summer because of a nearby incident where 1 kid visited Macau and supposedly infected his entire class. It has not been confirmed if what they fell ill with is indeed H1N1, but hey, jumping at real shadows beats having the anvil drop at a later time.
So yes, while I do resent the over over-hype and anti-foreigner sentiments by those living in China (including my own relatives), I understand where the concern is coming from. China is an extremely densely populated country with a population of over 1.3 million. A highly contagious disease there will spread like wildfire and with its huge population, hospitals no doubt quickly find themselves understaffed and unequipped not for lack of ability to treat, but by the overwhelming numbers of patients.
This is actually not unlike the SARS scare a couple years back where the states freaked out and Chinese citizens (as long as they weren’t traveling cross-country) didn’t feel it too badly, especially since their own news didn’t report on it too much while the western presses were all over it. I wouldn’t quite call it censorship, but rather choice hype by the media. Okay, one or the other depending on your government.
In the end, I’m still going to China. It’s just that I’m probably going to visit a few less places and spend more time with people in useless surgical masks and be herded along by tightened security. Something I still need to look in to–future post perhaps?
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- CDC – http://www.cdc.gov/H1N1FLU/ [↩]
- CDC: How does novel H1N1 flu compare to seasonal flu in terms of its severity and infection rates? – http://www.cdc.gov/H1N1flu/qa.htm [↩]
I realized that the really like to hype things up in Asian countries. I still remember SARS and though it was pretty bad, it definitely wasn’t as bad as the media in Taiwan made it out to be.