Is it safe to travel to Thailand? Latest advice after deadly coronavirus kills 132

[zydeco]

Just now, ThaiBunny said:

Yet tourism in Phuket recovered rather rapidly after the tsunami

Infected corpses.

[30la]

11 hours ago, webfact said:

The UK government has warned: "There is an ongoing outbreak of coronavirus.

"The virus originated in Wuhan City, Hubei Province but cases have been confirmed in other parts of China and the region, including Thailand. "You should comply with any additional screening measures put in place by the local authorities."

Put simply, stay in your country ...

[zydeco]

And what happens if this gets a foothold in India?  Outbreak Spreads to India; WHO Mulls Global Alarm: Virus Update

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-29/who-to-mull-emergency-decree-death-toll-hits-169-virus-update

 

Edited January 30, 2020 by zydeco

[HHTel]

25 minutes ago, Parsve said:

I guess that you have missed that the Thai helth minister yesterday declared that there should not be any official reports from Thailand about Coronavirus before February 7 and also that the first person outside China that have died of Corona-virus was in Chang Mai.

It's already been updated that this person in Chang Mai did not die of anything related to the coronavirus.  A further report of a man collapsing at the airport has found high levels of alcohol in his blood.  Again, nothing to do with coronavirus.

[Parsve]

51 minutes ago, zydeco said:

57 minutes ago, Parsve said:

I guess that you have missed that the Thai helth minister yesterday declared that there should not be any official reports from Thailand about Coronavirus before February 7 and also that the first person outside China that have died of Corona-virus was in Chang Mai.

I saw the story about restrictions in Chiang Mai but not nationwide. Is that the case? And if there is a delay and it takes over a week for them to report something and that happens to include death(s), then this place will be dog meat for tourism. Nobody will ever trust them again.

I do not know, but what is the point if not over the country?

[Polaky]

If this starts getting out of control then China should close all her borders, no flights in or out until it is contained, but it might be too late as we speak, also i believe that chinese citizens should take the initiative and stay home, if your walking down beach road in pattaya and see a china walking towards you ....run dont walk.

[Russel]

Is it safe to travel in Thailand? But what sort of idiocy is it? The entire casualties are in China no one in Thailand this is just media terrorism

[dcnx]

1 hour ago, ThaiBunny said:

Yet tourism in Phuket recovered rather rapidly after the tsunami

Yet their early warning system is still broke and not maintained. Ripe for another disaster. These donkeys never learn.

[metisdead]

Some off topic posts and replies have been removed. 

[rickudon]

Is it safe to travel to Thailand? Depends on your definition of 'safe'. This coronavirus is not particularly deadly - maybe 2-3%, maybe lower as many cases are unreported because symptoms are not bad enough to be hospitalised. So maybe just a bit worse than a typical flu epidemic.

 

What is worrying is the speed at which it is spreading. Number of cases doubling every week. In part this could just  be because testing has risen even faster. However it is now in every Chinese province as well as 15 other countries. You can only keep an entire country in lock down for so long - food etc. needs to be moved around, and what it does to your economy i shudder to think.

 

I took part in the effort to stop Foot and Mouth disease in the big UK outbreak 18 years ago, and watched as the number of new infections slowly rose while the government confidently claimed it was under control - in the end the army was needed to stop it, and it took time. This disease is spreading MUCH faster. While the Chinese are making a massive effort to contain it (i doubt if any other country could have introduced such draconian measures) it is now out in the general population.

 

Thailand's efforts are pathetic, and as it already has the most cases outside China, transmission to the local population has probably already occurred, and as we have seen it only takes one month to get out of control .... and you may ask why the government says only people who have come from Wuhan have it .... how many potential contacts have they tested? How many THAI people have they tested?

 

I think it has a good chance of becoming a global pandemic - even if China controls it, will Thailand, India and the other countries succeed? We are not talking about a death toll like Spanish flu, but it could end up in the millions.  Globally, that is just a blip population wise. But Thailand is probably not the best country to go on holiday to just now. Your death risk could be low, but the chances of flight bans, closed attractions and other related issues could really spoil your holiday - March and April are most at risk.

 

 

 

[URMySunshine]

This in the end is going to turn out one massive nothing burger but we are in the grip of hysteria now. As you were !

•  

•  

  January 15, 2006

[balo]

If you have a good immune system and are not too old, I would not worry too much.

If you catch it all you have to do is to relax, drink a lot of fluid , take your medication and sweat it out for 2 weeks. It will not kill you. 

 

[BigC]

16 hours ago, smedly said:

for Thailand it could be too late since screening is ineffective at identifying those infected, they show no symptoms and can still spread the virus which makes this a very dangerous situation

 

Thailand needs to take some very serious steps now or this will spread out of control if it hasn't already 

Yes if we all die we wont be able to spend money  is the big shopping malls

 

Pattaya is pretty dead anyway

 

Maybe now safest place in Thailand   now 

 

 

[BigC]

Also csn it stay undetected  in your body for 2 weeks before showinf symptoms 

 

If so i am goj going  to party like its 1999

[DrTuner]

38 minutes ago, balo said:

If you have a good immune system and are not too old, I would not worry too much.

If you catch it all you have to do is to relax, drink a lot of fluid , take your medication and sweat it out for 2 weeks. It will not kill you. 

What worries me is that the dead/recovered ratio is stubbornly keeping over 50% for the last few days. It should be going down as people recover. Currently at 170/(170+133) = 56.1%. 

Edited January 30, 2020 by DrTuner

[JHolmesJr]

If you're lying on a beach in Phuket you probably won't get sick...it's the journey there....through

airports, on planes, in crowded hi-density areas that makes it dodgy.

[dcnx]

1 hour ago, balo said:

If you have a good immune system and are not too old, I would not worry too much.

If you catch it all you have to do is to relax, drink a lot of fluid , take your medication and sweat it out for 2 weeks. It will not kill you. 

 

Unless it mutates. Or they run out of medicine. Or you’re just unlucky like the few healthy young people who have died already.
 

Phase 1 of the Spanish Flu wasn’t bad either. 

[dcnx]

5 hours ago, Parsve said:

I do not know, but what is the point if not over the country?

It’s safe to say it’s nationwide. Everywhere else in the world where Chinese go are reporting new cases. Zip from Thailand since that announcement.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

27 minutes ago, dcnx said:

It’s safe to say it’s nationwide. Everywhere else in the world where Chinese go are reporting new cases. Zip from Thailand since that announcement.

 

One thing we do know re Thailand is, day by day, there has been a growing backlog of uncompleted lab tests for potential coronavirus patients here.... We don't know how many cases they're clearing with confirmed diagnoses each day one way or the other. But we do know the volume of pending cases awaiting confirmation has quickly climbed to 140+. That could explain in part why their 14 confirmed cases number hasn't been changing.

 

[HHTel]

Quote

Here is what we know for sure: While more than 100 people have died in this outbreak so far, seasonal flu kills between 250,000 and 650,000 people annually. For most people, “you’re probably more likely to be catching flu than you are to be getting coronavirus,” said Devi Sridhar, chair in global public health at the University of Edinburgh.

Quote

“The majority of fatal cases are elderly and/or have a chronic disease that would increase their susceptibility to infectious diseases,” Columbia University epidemiologist W. Ian Lipkin told the NYT.

But that doesn’t mean that otherwise healthy people can rest easy in the face of the growing viral outbreak.

The majority are in high risk groups, but not all.  Although it still seems that if you're a normally healthy individual, there is little to worry about.

 

It'll be a few weeks before we know for sure.

[LeoCesar]

18 hours ago, Wiggy said:

The Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-20 infected an estimated 500 million people and killed 20-50 million. Now that was a virus to be worried about. 

50 million to 100 million died from the spanish flu.

Edited January 30, 2020 by LeoCesar
corr

[Soikhaonoiken]

Thailand keeps saying they have this virus under control, haha but they can't stop it spreading,  they are quoting there are 14 confirmed cases in Thailand, but if this is anything like TAT there figures will be miles out, and are they telling the truth... 

[merijn]

Why are the borders not closed for flights from and to China ?

Checking the arrival passengers only on temperature is not enough as people can transfer the virus in their incubation period while they don't have any symptoms.

Most other countries stop flying to China completely.

[xeniv23]

This flu season in the US has already killed around 8500 people and counting and it's about an average season.  Probably around 200 deaths from Corona virus at this stage, likely to be many more it seems but compared to the influenza virus that happens every year it's not time to go crazy just yet.  It would be nice if people in the US got this freaked out about gun deaths, around 33,000 per year.  Or opioid overdose deaths, or drunk drivers,  or the half million premature deaths from tobacco.  There are lots of things to get all spun up about.  Corona virus should be taken seriously but perspective is needed as well.  

[ukrules]

1 hour ago, merijn said:

people can transfer the virus in their incubation period while they don't have any symptoms.

How exactly does that happen? Any ideas?

 

When symptomatic you're usually coughing and sneezing large amounts of infected fluids into the air around you but with no symptoms I suspect it would be much harder for the virus to propagate.

 

[organicman]

The people effected with Coronavirus. Does anyone know where in Thailand? I want to avoid these areas. 

[Wiggy]

4 hours ago, LeoCesar said:

50 million to 100 million died from the spanish flu.

I went by this:

 

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/1918-flu-pandemic

[soalbundy]

23 hours ago, PremiumLane said:

Christ, it ain't the bubonic plague.... yes, it is dangerous for the elderly and those with serious health issues already. Yes, we should try to contain it and make sure we can create a vaccine for it. But, the scaremongering and hyperbole is getting stupid. 

Evening Standard shows that 3,800 deaths have been caused in London alone by air pollutants, run for the hills!!!

[LivinLOS]

15 hours ago, Angry Dragon said:

erm depending on the flu season, the range is all over the place (but I will grant you that it is never near 3%).  as for the 3% figure being thrown about, you're seeing that drop as the days go by (more infections but fewer deaths).

 

see you here next week when I'm sure this thread will be alive and well - not

The Lancent has published a paper with a studied death rate of 11% from the first cohort. 

 

The 2 - 3 % is 1) chinese publishing and 2) without factoring in the delay time between onset of symptoms and mortality.. 

Another way of looking at is there are, according to the johns hopkins data set (at time of posting) 143 'recovered'... So 143 recovered out of almost 10,000 infected. 

 

Basically until this runs much more of a duration, we have no way to be sure of mortality only to know that 2 - 3% looks at the low end. 

[anchadian]

https://www.thaipbsworld.com/china-virus-death-toll-tops-200-as-who-declares-global-emergency/

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – The death toll in China from the new coronavirus reached 213 on Friday, with overall cases worldwide rising rapidly in an outbreak that the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency.