SARS and the Special Olympics?

davej

Ok maybe I'm being a bit controversial here and this is just scaremongering.

But I've been thinking about this recently. Aren't we potentially in a spot of trouble with people from all countries of the world coming to Ireland for the special olympics? Eg the Chinese are being hosted in Bray and Arklow is hosting Singapore. In all there are 166 countries with around 40,000 athletes, officials and family coming over.

Is there not a risk of SARS spreading to Ireland because of this?

davej

Frank Grimes

It could just as easily spread here from someone who is travelling from one of those countries, Irish person or otherwise.
We'd have to stop travel to and from here to be 100% sure, which I'm obviously not proposing
To answer your question, if we are currently allowing in visitors/Irish people returning from these countries then we should not stop the athletes coming in.

daveirl

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davej

Seems like the media are slowly starting to pick up on this.
Today on rte.ie:

FEAR FACTOR MAIN SARS PROBLEM

http://www.onbusiness.ie/2003/0415/mibusiness.html

I expect this to become big over the next month or two (i.e. on the morning talk radio programmes).

davej

Cork

There is a problem with SARS. Some people have genuine fears and others may have fears that are unfounded.

Maybe there should be a public information campaign to let us know about SARS & how our health system could deal with an outbreak.

Lack OF Knowledge is a breeding ground for fear. Talk Radio is fine for whipping up fears and creating storys but the Department Of Health needs to inform the nation.

hallelujajordan

The DOH need to URGENTLY resolve the doctors dispute. If we do see SARS in Ireland either because of the special olympics or for some other reason then we need our National Disease Surveillance Centre to be able to respond very quickly . . . . If SARS were to arrive in Ireland tomorrow we'd be pretty screwed from a surveillance and control point of view.

bonkey

Originally posted by Cork
Maybe there should be a public information campaign to let us know about SARS & how our health system could deal with an outbreak.

Youre forgetting that to do so would involve knowing what SARS is, how it spreads, what treatments are effective etc.

SARS is probably the biggest medical scare since the outbreak of HIV, because we simply don't know enough about it.

Any public information campaign would involve a lot of "we don't know"s, a smattering of "we think"s, and a good dollop of "hopefully"s. This is not conducive to engendering public trust. It is far more likely to spread panic than avert it.

I would hope that the Irish government is quietly doing something about dealing with the possibilities of an outbreak in Ireland, but if they are then I would imagine that their best card to play right now is keeping schtum until more is known, or until they have to comment based on media pressure.

Its a tough call. I think the government are hoping the media will try and avoid spreading panic by taking the "We know very little. Is there anything we can and are doing Mr. Minister" line, at which point I would hope that the government have something with more credibility than the iodine tablet fiasco.

jc

hmmm

I don't know why people are making such a big hullaballoo about the special olympics. If you've been on a bus in Dublin recently you might confuse it with Guangdong provice

Beëlzebooze

What amazes me is that if there was an outbreak of Foot and Mouth in S.E. Asia, we would be taking precautions with visitors but with something that kills humans, not animals, we don't. Go Figure

Money...


If there was an outbreak of ,for example, F&M in S.E Asia, travel would be restricted to protect the European cattle from an economic point of view.

The various olympic delegations will not be denied access to Ireland because the Special Olympics means good money to the local economy.

DaveIrl, you surprise me, you schould ALWAYS take the economic factor into account if at first the problem isn't clear.

daveirl

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