Swine Flu

[strake]

Am I the only regular traveller who thinks this is all going a bit too far?

According to this: Swine flu: pregnant women told to stay home - Times Online (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article6719356.ece)

VS and BA check-in staff are now "diagnosing" swine flu cases and refusing boarding to those they believe to be infected. Remarkable how these staff have become medics overnight.

We are travelling en famille to Miami tomorrow. My daughter has a cough (not associated with piggy flu according to our doctor) so one wonders what will happen should she expectorate in that charming way only five year olds can as we hand over our passports...

I shall update interested readers either from Miami Beach or, if perhaps I cleared my throat too vigourously at T3, from back home...!

[davidjohnson6]

You might like to have a read through...
http://www.pprune.org/passengers-slf-self-loading-freight/372301-overruling-medically-paranoid.html

I found that my GP was quite happy the last time the media took a hold of this story, to provide a letter saying I didn't have swine flu so as to assuage the worries of others. If you have time before going to Heathrow, a side trip to your local surgery might be in order.

[Haven't a clue]

Anyone who has flown into China recently will have endured the anxiety of waiting in their seats once the aircraft has arrived at the terminal while several people dressed in full protective gear pass through the cabin checking everyone's temeperature with some gun shaped detector. We all hold our breath in case one (and only one) pax fails the test, at which point we assume we will all be sent back to our point of origin or worse herded into (hopefully) 4 star quarrentine.

But even after passing this test we all have to present our detailed health forms (do you have a temperature, fever, cough, cold etc) to another group of checkers before reaching immigration. Anyone with those symptoms (and there were quite a few) are marched off to a doctor for further tests and questions.

Maybe BA/VS check in staff are trying to prevent the forced return of one of their aircraft (presumably all at the airlines cost with the paxexpecting full reimbursement for their aborted journey) due to one, and only one, passenger failing such a test regime.

[strake]

Maybe BA/VS check in staff are trying to prevent the forced return of one of their aircraft (presumably all at the airlines cost with the paxexpecting full reimbursement for their aborted journey) due to one, and only one, passenger failing such a test regime.

The point, however, is that in Beijing, Narita or most other Asian airports, the checking is done by medical personnel (I even have a "swine flu free certificate" signed by a Doctor from a recent arrival in Japan) and not airline staff.

Now, if a check-in agent has suspicions and then refers to medics, well, possibly, but the article states 'British Airways and Virgin Atlantic confirmed this weekend that its staff were not allowing suspected sufferers to travel. A BA spokesman said some passengers had been turned away at check-in because they had flu symptoms".

Where shall we stop? Measles, chicken pox, nasty head-cold? This flu is no more fatal that any other flu in previous years, yet apparently, we can now be stopped from going about our business by the suspicions of a check-in agent.

[lexxity]

Chicken pox is already a turn away if the blisters haven't scabbed over and five (IIRC) days passed since the last one did scab.

[davidjohnson6]

we can now be stopped from going about our business by the suspicions of a check-in agent.All the more reason (subject to any constraints on dropping off baggage) to check in online and print your boarding card at home.

If your coughing is not noticed until you are on the plane with the doors closed and awaiting take-off (and you have bags in the hold), it incentivises cabin crew to be rather more certain that you have swine flu before offloading you !

[22/04]

The real problem is that the "pandemic" is only really established in the UK, the US and Mexico. The rest of the world stills hopes to avoid it. They won't; when they realise they will realise they will have to live with it like us in he UK.

[montag]

VS and BA check-in staff are now "diagnosing" swine flu cases and refusing boarding to those they believe to be infected. Remarkable how these staff have become medics overnight.

They are not the first. A number of years ago, arriving at LAS I was asked by the US Customs if I had recent contact with animals. Then if I had ever had Foot and Mouth disease.

I thought that 'Moo' might have been an unwise answer.

[Load Toad]

This pretty much sums up how I feel about this latest flu farce:

CONCERN GROWS OVER LACK OF PANIC - The Daily Mash (http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/health/concern-grows-over-lack-of-panic-200907201915/)

[racedo]

In many ways there is a lack of panic but think if people stopped and thought about it they would make reasonable contingencies.

The virulence may not be the thing that cause the problem, the length may be the issue.

Normal flu bug lasts couple of weeks where the real hit happens and most industries and businesses can survive through that.

The concern with El Porko Flu is that the the build up has now been taking place for a number of weeks with different people getting hit, come October / November it may be widespread where many companies run on virtually skeleton staff for weeks on end.

Easier to relate it back to couple of days on Snow in winter, country grinds to a halt, supermarkets who run with little stock start showing empty shelves as their distribution centres are not being supplied or are not able to send the stuff out. This clears up in 3-4 days.

Now looking at Flu bug where producers may shut down because their key personnel are off ill, logistic companies struggle for drivers as many off ill, distribution centres struggle for staff to load the trucks for individual stores, store lack the staff to restock shelves and even open.................net result supermarkets have lots of empty shelves and people hoard and panic. The links in the chain are not that strong and a flu bug that lasts 4-5 months allied with a bad winter sets its own problems.

One of course assumes that Plod will be similarly affected and imagine a city like Reading where 60% of cops are off ill.

The lack of panic can be good but people do get lulled into a false sense of security that bad things never happen, I agree with this BUT also believe in taking reasonable preparation in ensuring that you have prepared some options.

I think there exists the possibility that Air Travel could get suspended for a month if things really get that bad.

[racedo]

They are not the first. A number of years ago, arriving at LAS I was asked by the US Customs if I had recent contact with animals. Then if I had ever had Foot and Mouth disease.

I thought that 'Moo' might have been an unwise answer.They probably would have though you were a MAD COW.....

ok will get my hat and coat.

[minstermineman]

Its all a con, probably no worse than any other flu, over hyped by the media to sell papers / airtime.
The Gvt likes this as it detracts from their appalling running of the country - their appalling stance on NOT providing our armed forces with necessary equipment, and of course the appalling state of our economy.

Thats my opinion anyway !

off to buy shares in the Tamiflu manufacturing companies . . .

[A2QFI]

Slight thread drift but the present system for the issue of Tamiflu beggars belief. I work in a hospital where we issue it, either with a GP prescription or a faxed authority issued by an NHS call centre.

This is not an addictive or valuable medication and yet it cannot be issued by GPs or Pharmacies; over and above this, people collecting it for sick friends/relatives have to produce Photo ID for themselves and the patient. In my county some of the collection centres are only open for 2 hours a day and there is no way this sytem is going to cope with the forecast 100,000 cases a day by the end of next month. We don't produce ID to collect a prescription at B**ts so why is it necessaryat a hospital?

[Load Toad]

If you over prescribe a medicine - an anti viral or anti bacterial - what tends to happen to its effectiveness

[BlooMoo]

If you have time before going to Heathrow, a side trip to your local surgery might be in order.

Seems to me that the highest probability (higher than tube trains, sports stadia/bars - but NOT airports/aircraft) location for coming into contact with swine flu is in a GP practice - whether its the waiting room, the toilet or just brushing past people on the way in/out to the carpark.

Maybe pax should be asked if they've visited their doc lately. If so they potentially reach the level of contamination risk that they would have in coming into recent contact with cabin crew/ground staff. Surely your average GP is riddled with the virus by now.

[A2QFI]

Part of the problem, I think, is the use of the word PANdemic - too much like panic. What is going around in UK is way less than what goes around all and every winter. There is less of it and it is killing fewer people but is whipped up into a fenzy by the media and the daily appearances on TV of Sir Liam Donaldson. He talks a lot of sense but he doesn't need to talk at all. This is just a slight variation of a 'flu bug' that is with us all the time and kills a few people every year.

[brockenspectre]

Can someone explain to me why there seem to be so many cases in the UK and not in other European countries? Is it because we are self-diagnosing or hysterically manifesting symptoms that don't really exist? Are there really so many cases here and not elsewhere?

This article I just grabbed via the Newsnow website 'Go back to your disease-ridden country!' What the French said to British schoolchildren with swine flu | Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1201496/Go-disease-ridden-country-What-French-said-British-schoolchildren-swine-flu.html?ITO=1490) seems to be overkill but if the world considers the UK (thanks to movies like 28 Weeks Later maybe) as the source of all plagues, then it would behove our media to play down the situation or at least report it responsibly?!!

I am to see my Floridian chums in early September so hopefully the US won't clamp down and require a medical certificate - I saw my GP routinely a couple of weeks ago and don't, as someone else has written, want to risk the cauldron of germs that is the waiting-room before I travel!! :ok:

[Bealzebub]

Not like the Daily Mail to promote this sort of xenophobia! You would have thought the citizens of Normandy would have shouted something like "Revenez à votre pays en proie à la maladie" rather than having to translate it into English. Typical of the poor level of language teaching in this country I suppose. Can you imagine the citizens of Luton translating their own protests into French in order to offend the sensitivities of the teenage pupils of a comprehensive school in Normandy.

Unlike many other countries, the UK more or less gave up at the first hurdle. Ministers assure everybody that warehouses are awash with tamiflu and operators are standing by to take your call. I think it became a national pandemic once sky news had stopped interviewing legions of surgically masked unemployed, returning from their fortnight holiday in Cancun! However the untimely demise of a surgically enhanced pop singer might have also contributed to that lapse of coverage?

If the French are basing their response on the movie 28 weeks later, it would be as well not to remind them of the closing scenes from that film!

[strake]

Just in case anyone is interested, we came through T3 without being hauled off to the sick piggy farm. In fact the subject wasn't mentioned by check-in staff or anyone else for that matter. Neither was there any evidence of concern on arriving in Miami.
There is no coverage here on TV channels nor have I seen any mention in the press.

[OFSO]

Can someone explain to me why there seem to be so many cases in the UK

Watching Catalan TV there seem to be as many cases reported here as in England and certainly quite a few deaths. Moving further afield, Madrid is a real hotspot.

My wife came back from a visit to France last week with a severe 24 hour bout of flu (as she is asthmatic we have a wide range of medicines at home, steroids, ventolin, etc.) and subsequently I tried to get some statistics on swine flu in the Perpignan area where we'd just been.

Rather like CJD in France, nothing, "never heard of it", "doesn't happen here".