SARS fears easily bubble to surface: County impacted from schools to travel
Reprinted from Ventura County Star, May 12, 2003
By T.J. Sullivan
A parent in Oak Park Unified School District mentioned at a recent PTA meeting that her husband had come down with a flulike illness upon returning from a trip to an Asian country. The remark might have drawn sprinkles of sympathy were it uttered a year ago, but in the current climate it conjured storm clouds in the minds of parents. Some children were kept at home for fear the man might have the deadly and mysterious SARS virus. They imagined it being transmitted to classrooms through his kids. “We contacted the parents,” said Ken Moffett, interim superintendent of the district. “He’d obviously gotten a cold … but everybody is sensitive to this issue … Parents were very concerned.” A Thousand Oaks family was confronted with similar sensitivity upon returning last month from an Easter-break journey to China. After spending a surreal time behind surgical masks in a subdued Beijing, the children’s homecoming caused some parents to question the wisdom of allowing them back through the schoolhouse gate. Calls were made to local health officials and the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The daughter’s private high school was satisfied that sufficient precautions had been taken by the family, but the youngest boy’s private elementary school required him to submit to daily inspections. “After consulting with the Health Department, the school’s administrators have the nurse taking his temperature every day to make sure he does not have a fever,” said the boy’s father, S.R. Nair.
Newspaper headlines, radio bulletins and broadcast news reports all have fed a fever pitch of fear about the newly discovered respiratory disease SARS. It has impacted lives even in Ventura County, which has not detected a single confirmed case. SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, is known to have infected about 7,000 people in 32 countries. About 500 of the victims have died, according to the World Health Organization, but none of the deaths have been in the United States, where fewer than 100 cases have been detected. Two people in Ventura County were suspected of having SARS after visiting Asian countries, but they have since been determined to not have the disease. Regardless, the Communicable Disease Division of Ventura County’s Public Health Services department receives calls daily from county residents and physicians. Mondays are the busiest, says Marilyn Billimek, a supervising public health nurse. A weekend of news feeds worries, particularly during cold and flu season. “We just don’t want to be caught saying that somebody doesn’t have it when they really do, and then have somebody else get real sick and have a death or something,” Billimek said. “That’s what worries us. That’s why we pay attention to what people are saying and follow through.”
Local impact
Ventura County has been impacted in many ways. Pharmacies say they have received a small amount of interest in the purchase of surgical masks, which are in short supply. “In the beginning of the scare there was a big demand,” said Olga Core, a pharmacist at Lynn Oaks Pharmacy in Thousand Oaks. “But I don’t have any in stock, and we haven’t been able to get any.”
Travel plans have been changed. Chief Deputy Dante Honorico and four other members of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department canceled a trip to China as part of the National Association of Asian American Law Enforcement Commanders. The Chinese government told them not to come. “We were ready,” Honorico said. “We had masks all packed and hand washes and everything else, because we knew what we would be faced with when we got there. “Now I’m glad that we didn’t go,” he conceded. “It turned out to be more serious than was first announced.” Honorico took the vacation time, which he’d already scheduled to use, and went to Germany. David Del Testa, a professor of history at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, had planned a grant-funded trip to Vietnam for himself and four students to punctuate a year spent studying the diary of a Vietnamese teenager who documented her journey through Indochina in 1943. But the grant was canceled because “SARS was too great of a threat to the students and too great of a liability,” Del Testa said. Even Billimek had plans, a 27-day journey through China to kick off her retirement in June. Instead, she’s replaced it with a trip to Washington, D.C. “You cannot exist being paranoid about everything, but you have to live, with care,” she said. Kate Phillips, president of Ventura County’s Classic Travel, said corporations have put out an edict that trips to Asia are off until further notice. But an odd side effect of all the cancellations has been the availability of bargain cruises off California’s shores. “For example, Crystal Cruises withdrew their ship from Asia, repositioned it in California waters and has newly scheduled itineraries at incredibly low prices,” Phillips said. Travelers are “going nuts” buying up tickets.
Santa Barbara has had several instances of concern. The annual Chinese festival scheduled for June was canceled because it’s often attended by visitors from China. Other impacts include the avoidance of businesses in Los Angeles’ Chinatown and the San Gabriel Valley, even though the virus has no link to people of Chinese origin other than the fact that China was the country in which it was discovered. On a recent evening out in the San Gabriel Valley, Hillary Ling, an Oxnard dentist, said only two tables were occupied at the popular Chinese restaurant at which he dined. “It was one of the large restaurants in San Gabriel, and normally it was very, very busy,” said Ling, president of the Ventura County Chinese American Association. “I asked the waitress and she said things have been pretty bad.” Dr. Cary Savitch, an infectious disease specialist in Ventura, said some people are overreacting. “You have a much greater chance of choking on spinach in a Chinese restaurant than of contracting SARS, at this point in time,” he said.
Overreaction
Scientists, including the respected virologist David Baltimore, speak as Shakespeare’s Hamlet did of the importance of bearing “those ills we have.” Instead, many people have chosen to “fly to others that we know not of.” Although diabetes, heart disease and car accidents are well-known causes of death, and far more likely to kill people in California this year than SARS, more fears are being voiced about SARS. Past maladies of the moment have inspired similar stress. The hantavirus was big in 1993, tainting tourist destinations like Taos and Santa Fe, N.M. But few were affected. As of March, the CDC said a total of 335 cases of hantavirus have been reported in the United States. About 38 percent have resulted in death. West Nile virus was a boon for bug-repellent producers. It is spread by the bite of infected mosquitoes. As of April, the CDC reported 284 people died from West Nile. Fewer than 1 percent of those infected become severely ill. In the early 1980s it was E. coli, more specifically known as E. coli O157:H7. It was discovered after people ate contaminated, undercooked hamburgers. More than 10 years later, in 1995, the CDC said the form of E. coli causes 250 deaths a year. There are ills that cause far more fatalities. AIDS, for which there is no cure, has killed nearly 500,000 in the United States since it was discovered in the 1980s. Heart disease, the No. 1 cause of death, kills about 700,000 a year in the United States. Diabetes kills about 70,000 a year.
More study
Dr. George Yu, a specialist in pulmonary diseases and critical-care medicine with offices in Oxnard and Camarillo, said it’s important to focus on what is known. “It’s important for us in the health field to hopefully calm people’s fears down,” he said. That effort is complicated, however, by policies such as the one instituted by the University of California at Berkeley this past week. The institution said it will welcome about 80 students from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, who have enrolled in core academic classes that begin May 27th. The school will, however, maintain its ban on nearly 600 students who had enrolled in English as a Second Language classes to a UC extension program. “That really places politics over medical rationale at this time,” Yu said. “If it were issued by a public health official, that would be a different policy altogether. Savitch agreed, although he’s also careful to point out the potential for a pandemic. Public health agencies must plan for the worst-case scenario, he said, even though the spread of the disease appears to have slowed. The method of transmission is still being studied, although it’s known to spread person to person. The death rate is also being debated. The CDC has said 6.6 percent of those infected with SARS will die, but WHO figures have gone as high as 15 percent. Others have said it’s even higher. Some physicians have pointed to the Spanish flu, which was spread in part by soldiers during and after World War I in 1918 and 1919. Though health officials and historians say they’ll never really know how many people died in that pandemic, estimates have put the death toll between 20 million and 70 million worldwide, and at more than 500,000 in the United States. “If (SARS) in fact exploded like influenza … it could close down our health care system,” Savitch said. Without access to health care, greater numbers would likely die, he said.
China
Local entrepreneurs who do business in Asian countries say they still will travel there. William Irion, a Santa Paula resident who journeys to Japan and China, returned Wednesday from a trip to both countries. “In China, I was checked repeatedly, with scanners and thermometers, and they had forms for you to fill out getting on and off the plane,” he said. Irion says he will probably avoid Beijing until concerns about SARS are assuaged, but he may visit other parts of China. S.R. Nair, a Thousand Oaks businessman, said he may go to Hong Kong in June. “I will if I have to,” he said. On his recent trip to Beijing he wore a surgical mask, avoided crowded places and took private cars instead of taxis. “You have to take some precautions,” he said. “But it’s nothing to panic about.”
Copyright 2003, Ventura County Star. All Rights Reserved.
SARS fears easily bubble to surface: County impacted from schools to travel
Reprinted from Ventura County Star, May 12, 2003
By T.J. Sullivan
A parent in Oak Park Unified School District mentioned at a recent PTA meeting that her husband had come down with a flulike illness upon returning from a trip to an Asian country. The remark might have drawn sprinkles of sympathy were it uttered a year ago, but in the current climate it conjured storm clouds in the minds of parents. Some children were kept at home for fear the man might have the deadly and mysterious SARS virus. They imagined it being transmitted to classrooms through his kids. “We contacted the parents,” said Ken Moffett, interim superintendent of the district. “He’d obviously gotten a cold … but everybody is sensitive to this issue … Parents were very concerned.” A Thousand Oaks family was confronted with similar sensitivity upon returning last month from an Easter-break journey to China. After spending a surreal time behind surgical masks in a subdued Beijing, the children’s homecoming caused some parents to question the wisdom of allowing them back through the schoolhouse gate. Calls were made to local health officials and the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The daughter’s private high school was satisfied that sufficient precautions had been taken by the family, but the youngest boy’s private elementary school required him to submit to daily inspections. “After consulting with the Health Department, the school’s administrators have the nurse taking his temperature every day to make sure he does not have a fever,” said the boy’s father, S.R. Nair.
Newspaper headlines, radio bulletins and broadcast news reports all have fed a fever pitch of fear about the newly discovered respiratory disease SARS. It has impacted lives even in Ventura County, which has not detected a single confirmed case. SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, is known to have infected about 7,000 people in 32 countries. About 500 of the victims have died, according to the World Health Organization, but none of the deaths have been in the United States, where fewer than 100 cases have been detected. Two people in Ventura County were suspected of having SARS after visiting Asian countries, but they have since been determined to not have the disease. Regardless, the Communicable Disease Division of Ventura County’s Public Health Services department receives calls daily from county residents and physicians. Mondays are the busiest, says Marilyn Billimek, a supervising public health nurse. A weekend of news feeds worries, particularly during cold and flu season. “We just don’t want to be caught saying that somebody doesn’t have it when they really do, and then have somebody else get real sick and have a death or something,” Billimek said. “That’s what worries us. That’s why we pay attention to what people are saying and follow through.”
Local impact
Ventura County has been impacted in many ways. Pharmacies say they have received a small amount of interest in the purchase of surgical masks, which are in short supply. “In the beginning of the scare there was a big demand,” said Olga Core, a pharmacist at Lynn Oaks Pharmacy in Thousand Oaks. “But I don’t have any in stock, and we haven’t been able to get any.”
Travel plans have been changed. Chief Deputy Dante Honorico and four other members of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department canceled a trip to China as part of the National Association of Asian American Law Enforcement Commanders. The Chinese government told them not to come. “We were ready,” Honorico said. “We had masks all packed and hand washes and everything else, because we knew what we would be faced with when we got there. “Now I’m glad that we didn’t go,” he conceded. “It turned out to be more serious than was first announced.” Honorico took the vacation time, which he’d already scheduled to use, and went to Germany. David Del Testa, a professor of history at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, had planned a grant-funded trip to Vietnam for himself and four students to punctuate a year spent studying the diary of a Vietnamese teenager who documented her journey through Indochina in 1943. But the grant was canceled because “SARS was too great of a threat to the students and too great of a liability,” Del Testa said. Even Billimek had plans, a 27-day journey through China to kick off her retirement in June. Instead, she’s replaced it with a trip to Washington, D.C. “You cannot exist being paranoid about everything, but you have to live, with care,” she said. Kate Phillips, president of Ventura County’s Classic Travel, said corporations have put out an edict that trips to Asia are off until further notice. But an odd side effect of all the cancellations has been the availability of bargain cruises off California’s shores. “For example, Crystal Cruises withdrew their ship from Asia, repositioned it in California waters and has newly scheduled itineraries at incredibly low prices,” Phillips said. Travelers are “going nuts” buying up tickets.
Santa Barbara has had several instances of concern. The annual Chinese festival scheduled for June was canceled because it’s often attended by visitors from China. Other impacts include the avoidance of businesses in Los Angeles’ Chinatown and the San Gabriel Valley, even though the virus has no link to people of Chinese origin other than the fact that China was the country in which it was discovered. On a recent evening out in the San Gabriel Valley, Hillary Ling, an Oxnard dentist, said only two tables were occupied at the popular Chinese restaurant at which he dined. “It was one of the large restaurants in San Gabriel, and normally it was very, very busy,” said Ling, president of the Ventura County Chinese American Association. “I asked the waitress and she said things have been pretty bad.” Dr. Cary Savitch, an infectious disease specialist in Ventura, said some people are overreacting. “You have a much greater chance of choking on spinach in a Chinese restaurant than of contracting SARS, at this point in time,” he said.
Overreaction
Scientists, including the respected virologist David Baltimore, speak as Shakespeare’s Hamlet did of the importance of bearing “those ills we have.” Instead, many people have chosen to “fly to others that we know not of.” Although diabetes, heart disease and car accidents are well-known causes of death, and far more likely to kill people in California this year than SARS, more fears are being voiced about SARS. Past maladies of the moment have inspired similar stress. The hantavirus was big in 1993, tainting tourist destinations like Taos and Santa Fe, N.M. But few were affected. As of March, the CDC said a total of 335 cases of hantavirus have been reported in the United States. About 38 percent have resulted in death. West Nile virus was a boon for bug-repellent producers. It is spread by the bite of infected mosquitoes. As of April, the CDC reported 284 people died from West Nile. Fewer than 1 percent of those infected become severely ill. In the early 1980s it was E. coli, more specifically known as E. coli O157:H7. It was discovered after people ate contaminated, undercooked hamburgers. More than 10 years later, in 1995, the CDC said the form of E. coli causes 250 deaths a year. There are ills that cause far more fatalities. AIDS, for which there is no cure, has killed nearly 500,000 in the United States since it was discovered in the 1980s. Heart disease, the No. 1 cause of death, kills about 700,000 a year in the United States. Diabetes kills about 70,000 a year.
More study
Dr. George Yu, a specialist in pulmonary diseases and critical-care medicine with offices in Oxnard and Camarillo, said it’s important to focus on what is known. “It’s important for us in the health field to hopefully calm people’s fears down,” he said. That effort is complicated, however, by policies such as the one instituted by the University of California at Berkeley this past week. The institution said it will welcome about 80 students from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, who have enrolled in core academic classes that begin May 27th. The school will, however, maintain its ban on nearly 600 students who had enrolled in English as a Second Language classes to a UC extension program. “That really places politics over medical rationale at this time,” Yu said. “If it were issued by a public health official, that would be a different policy altogether. Savitch agreed, although he’s also careful to point out the potential for a pandemic. Public health agencies must plan for the worst-case scenario, he said, even though the spread of the disease appears to have slowed. The method of transmission is still being studied, although it’s known to spread person to person. The death rate is also being debated. The CDC has said 6.6 percent of those infected with SARS will die, but WHO figures have gone as high as 15 percent. Others have said it’s even higher. Some physicians have pointed to the Spanish flu, which was spread in part by soldiers during and after World War I in 1918 and 1919. Though health officials and historians say they’ll never really know how many people died in that pandemic, estimates have put the death toll between 20 million and 70 million worldwide, and at more than 500,000 in the United States. “If (SARS) in fact exploded like influenza … it could close down our health care system,” Savitch said. Without access to health care, greater numbers would likely die, he said.
China
Local entrepreneurs who do business in Asian countries say they still will travel there. William Irion, a Santa Paula resident who journeys to Japan and China, returned Wednesday from a trip to both countries. “In China, I was checked repeatedly, with scanners and thermometers, and they had forms for you to fill out getting on and off the plane,” he said. Irion says he will probably avoid Beijing until concerns about SARS are assuaged, but he may visit other parts of China. S.R. Nair, a Thousand Oaks businessman, said he may go to Hong Kong in June. “I will if I have to,” he said. On his recent trip to Beijing he wore a surgical mask, avoided crowded places and took private cars instead of taxis. “You have to take some precautions,” he said. “But it’s nothing to panic about.”
Copyright 2003, Ventura County Star. All Rights Reserved.