This has been all over the news for the past several days, so I’ll just quote some choice bits from the New York Times (registration might be required).

“BEIJING — A fast-spreading viral outbreak in China has killed 22 children, sickened nearly 3,600 others and caused panic among parents in an impoverished corner of Anhui Province, government health officials said Friday.

All of the fatalities, from lung problems and other complications, have been in children younger than 6, with a majority of them under 2.

The outbreak, caused by a particularly strong intestinal virus, enterovirus 71, or EV-71, has been spreading in the city of Fuyang, in east-central China, since early March. Provincial health officials, however, announced the outbreak only this week, raising questions about whether they had been trying to conceal it.”

The article continues…

“The virus begins with a fever and often leads to mouth ulcers and to blisters on the hands, feet and buttocks. Commonly known as hand, foot and mouth disease, it has no relation to the foot-and-mouth disease that infects livestock.

There is no vaccine or cure, but most patients recover in a week without treatment. In severe cases, brain swelling can lead to paralysis or death. Cleaning surfaces with bleach and washing hands significantly reduces the spread of the pathogen.”

This sounds pretty unpleasant.

I had an opportunity to visit Beijing and Shanghai right at the end of the SARS scare.  I’ll never forget the surgical masks.  Do you remember filling out the departure health cards and getting your temperature checked at the airport?  How about returning to the U.S. from China and being told to, “work from home for a few weeks, just in case…?”  The biggest challenge will come if we start encountering travel restrictions, as happened during SARS.  Business in China still requires direct personal contact, so obstacles to travel will slow everything down.  As others have noted extensively, the government is already doing its best to clamp down on visas.

Beyond getting there (and leaving), I always worry that tragedies like this could damage the popular perception of China, especially in the U.S.  Sadly, many of us are not particularly globally aware, and we tend to seize on these types of stories as evidence that China is somehow not really a player on the world stage.  This naive view will just hurt all of us over the long term.  Finally, it’s just a matter of time before we start worrying that goods exported from China might be contaminated by the virus. …sigh…

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