No SARS testing at U.S. airports

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Tuesday, April 8, 2003 | By Paul Sperry

[JohnHuang2]

WASHINGTON – U.S. health officials have advised airport immigration inspectors to admit foreign travelers from Asian countries hit hard by a deadly new pneumonia bug – even if they show symptoms of infection, U.S. inspectors complain.

"A good 90 percent of all passengers arriving from Asia are wearing face masks during the flights that arrive here," said a Bureau of Customs and Border Protection inspector at Los Angeles International Airport, which gets heavy Asian traffic. "Yet there are basically no safeguards set up at the airport to safeguard against the spread of germs here."

He told WorldNetDaily that LAX, the nation's fourth-busiest airport, has no quarantine area set up at any of its four international terminals to detain and isolate passengers with symptoms related to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, which has now killed more than 100 people and infected some 2,600 in 20 countries. China's southern Guangdong province, which includes Hong Kong, is believed to be the source of the virus, which has about an eight-to-10-day incubation period.

"We are not detaining any persons and requiring them to submit to any test prior to being admitted to the United States," said the officer. In a meeting last week, he and other inspectors were briefed about the fast-spreading virus by Health and Human Services Department officials assigned to LAX.

Travelers from Asia with signs of the illness, such as fever or breathing difficulties, are asked by federal health officials at the airport to fill out a form with their name and the address where they will be staying, as well as other information, he explains. They are then simply advised to see a doctor for testing, and allowed to enter the U.S.

The information is forwarded to the federal Centers for Disease Control.

"The are doing a numbers game only," the LAX inspector said.

CDC personnel have inspected certain flights from Asia after passengers have deplaned, he says.

"But there has been no instance where anyone has been detained or isolated due to any symptoms," he said.

An HHS spokeswoman here referred questions to the CDC in Atlanta, which did not immediately return phone calls.

A U.S. immigration officer at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, the nation's busiest, says a Chinese passenger recently was detained there after exhibiting signs of SARS, but was released after health officials determined that she was not infected with the virus. O'Hare over the past year has seen a surge in undocumented nationals from mainland China.

"She apparently just had a cold," the officer told WorldNetDaily.

He says public health officials have met Asian passengers at the gates to quiz them about symptoms they may be experiencing, while handing out information about SARS and local clinics.

Authorities in Thailand, in contrast, have subjected all foreign travelers, including Americans, to medical examinations upon entering airports there, while imposing strict quarantines on travelers diagnosed with SARS.

Airport authorities there and in other Asian countries have started wearing surgical gloves and masks.

Federal inspectors at O'Hare are wearing neither protective gear, but LAX inspectors have been advised by federal health officials to wear gloves while handling passports and other documents.

"We were told to wash our hands frequently and to wear gloves in the handling of documents," he said.

However, "we are not allowed to wear face masks during an inspection," based on orders from immigration supervisors, he added.

The SARS virus is believed to be spread by air, through coughing and sneezing, as well as by contact.

"We were told under no circumstances would we be allowed to wear face masks while in uniform," he said. "If someone coughs or spits up, we were told to call the floor rover or supervisor and have that person escorted to Public Health."

In lieu of the masks, a few inspectors have purchased small table fans to direct air away from their booths, he says.

Though still a medical mystery, SARS has a relatively low death rate of 4 percent. By comparison, at least a quarter of a million people around the world die from the common flu each year.

[unspun]

Just because we can't stop it, it doesn't mean that we can't mitigate the number of people affected by it. Suppose one of those people we can keep SARS from spreading to were your grandmother, or your baby.

[dljordan]

Gee, what makes you think the Gubmint wants a crisis? I'll probably get flamed for saying this but if the Feds wanted this stopped they would do it. Sars doesn't seem to be very deadly but maybe this is just to condition the sheeple. Of course the "Good Germans" among us refuse to believe there's anything behind the curtain and violently lash out at anyone that points to such things. The thing that galls me is that the Feds and there minions in the state and local governments are throwing this right in our faces and daring us to make a connection or say anything about it.

Waiting quietly for my rebuke.

[discostu]

What I'm saying is I don't think we can even mitigate it, at this juncture the best we can do is lie to ourselves and pretend we're actually doing something. Those kind of measure are usually expensive and always pointless.

[unspun]

I see not reason to let coughing, hacking people into the country, from east Asia right now.

[EternalHope]

Maybe this will be a civilization ending thing, or maybe it'll be a Trivial Pursuit question in the 2010 edition. And boy will we ever feel silly if it turns out to be the later and we act like it's the former.

Of course, it may be the later only because we acted like it was the former.

Which gets back to the fundamental question: How should we respond at this stage?

Since SARS clearly has the potential to be a worldwide plague, we should respond with aggressive efforts to contain it. If it turns out to have been a false alarm, so what? When the downside is a worldwide plague that could kill many million people, it is truly better to err on the side of caution.

My personal hope is that six months from now people look back on SARS as just another "flu", with no major impact on the world. I would be delighted to have "BonesMccoy" berating me for my concern about what he "knew" all along was nothing to worry about. At this point, however, it could go either way.

[discostu]

I see no reason to treat every Asian smoker like a plague carrier. We have to remember that people don't spend very long in customs, it's not going to be easy spotting the sick people.

[discostu]

I'm not sure SARS has the potential for a worldwide plague, at least no more than most nasty flus. I think the appropriate reaction at this point is wait and see. So far the only places it's spreading really fast are densely packed poorly sanitized cities, kind of a no brainer. It's got a fairly high fatality rate but it's not astronomical. Let the CDC guys do their work and keep an eye on it. Maybe I'm just hyper cynical because of the annual "worst flu ever" stories, but I'm just not getting scared about SARS.

[unspun]

How about disposable thermometers, for likely cases? Costs less than hospitalization.

[discostu]

But we're still hinging on defining likely cases. Given a 5 to 10 minute window of observation how do you tell the difference between somebody with allergies, somebody who smokes too much, and somebody with SARS? Or do we just examine everybody that displays any cold or flu symptoms while in line? Then there's the reverse, even the nastiest of illnesses will give you brief respites, so any SARS victims that manage to be symptom free for a few minutes will walk away. It's easy to say disposable termometers for likely cases, but much more difficult to determine what a likely case is.

[unspun]

Then there's the option of just banning people from certain nations for a time. There are options.

[discostu]

We can't even manage to ban people from terrorist countries so that's not gonna happen. There really aren't options. If this is the next big plague then it's going to kick ass and kill millions and go away in a few years, if it's not then it won't.

[freeeee]

We can't even manage to ban people from terrorist countries so that's not gonna happen.

Here, let me fix that:

We Our public servants can't even manage refuse to ban people from terrorist countries so that's not gonna happen.

There really aren't options.

Sure there are. There are several of them listed on every ballot come election day. We simply tell our public servants that their services are no longer required. You gotta speak the only language they understand: power.

[unspun]

So, you're telling me that the freedom of diseases is a libertarian cause, as well as the freedom to abuse drugs?

[aristeides]

At t he hearing yesterday Dr. Fauci said that, if we're lucky, we may have a vaccine in a year. That's another reason to want to buy time.

[discostu]

Last I heard they still worked for us. If there was a hugh and cry they'd do it, but there isn't so they won't.

As for your final paragraph, let's stay on topic. Unless you know of some ballot measure coming up to cure SARS, ni which case please elucidate.

[discostu]

No. As a matter of fact I have no idea how you would even think that from what I wrote. I'm simply pointing out that all of the "plans" for how to deal with SARS are expensive and doomed to be ineffective.

[discostu]

They've been saying that if we're lucky we'll have a vaccine for AIDS in a year... been saying it for over a dozen years. Apparently we're not very lucky. Or the people that make those predictions are idiots who shouldn't be trusted to give the time of day. Take your pick.

[unspun]

And I'm saying that "ineffective" isn't ineffective if you happen to be one who didn't catch the bug on September 29, 2003, or the guy he would have caught it from on October 3, because of care taken by the Feds (even though it wouldn't make a difference to some other poor guy). Epidemeology is a numbers game, among other things, is it not?

If this turns out to be a case of sniffles and a light fever, that's one thing, but a hazard to the lives of the infirm, elderly, and youth is a problem.

[discostu]

And you're wrong. I've asked numerous questions on how this could be accomplished and the best you can answer is that it might maybe somehow possibly save one persons's life. Bulldadda. Give a straight answer to the questions:
How do we know who is a "likely candidate"?
How will we quarantine them?
How long will they be quarantined?
How will we determine they actually have SARS?

Unless you can answer those questions any "plan" you come up with is a feel good measure doomed to be 100% innefective across the board. Yes epidemeology is a numbers game, and grabbing random people with the sniffles will waste a lot of numbers and accomplish ZERO.

[blam]

New SARS Outbreak Sparks 'Typhoid Mary' Fears