Is Coronavirus keeping you from booking liveaboard/overseas trips this year?

[Centrals]

If you still think you should be scared consider this: Doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff are going to hospitals every day. Crowded buildings with tons of sick people. They aren't walking around the halls of the hospitals wearing masks and they haven't stopped going to work. And they are all rolling their eyes at everyone else right now.

Marc Serota, MD”

Completely opposite from what you had described in Hong Kong.
We ONLY have 114 confirmed case since 23rd Jan. The only logical reason why the illness is NOT spreading so fast like in Iran, Italy, Korea and Japan : surgical mask.
If doctors and nurses in HK are not wearing those masks, there won't be many healthy personals taking good care of us by now.
Surgical mask is the first line of defense and change it every 4 hrs. Discard it properly.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Another perspective:

When I was facing a life and death procedure, I kept asking my doctor about my survival statistics. He replied: “In a population of 100, 40 will live, 60 will die. That is, from a scientific and medical perspective, you have a 40% survival rate. But you are not a population of 100. You are a population of one. You will either live or die. You are 100% dead or 100% alive. You will either end up in the 40% group or the 60% group. Do you I understand what I’m trying to say?”

That was a very harsh statement at the time and I never asked him about statistics again. Make of it what you will.

Glad you were in the 40%.

 

[uncfnp]

Completely opposite from what you had described in Hong Kong.
We ONLY have 114 confirmed case since 23rd Jan. The only logical reason why the illness is NOT spreading so fast like in Iran, Italy, Korea and Japan : surgical mask.
If doctors and nurses in HK are not wearing those masks, there won't be many healthy personals taking good care of us by now.
Surgical mask is the first line of defense and change it every 4 hrs. Discard it properly.

There is quite a lot of debate here over the effectiveness of surgical masks for prevention. Surgical masks are thin and ill fitting with loose edges. They were designed, obviously, for surgeons and it was to prevent microbial transmission from the surgeon to the patient, not vice versa. Here it is recommended that if an ill patient must be seen, they wear a surgical mask. Healthcare providers are to wear N95 masks. These are designed to protect the user from respiratory pathogens.

But the sad truth is, in large part because of the high demand by the general public, these mask are not available to healthcare providers. Heck, we can’t even get surgical masks. We have three medical equipment suppliers and all three have them on back order. Forget about N95’s. Not going to happen anytime soon unless the government takes action and makes them available where they are really needed when it happens.

In fact, at least one UC office I know that did have surgical masks openly available to patients had to remove them from access, they were being stolen.

By the way, surgical masks are recommended to be changed between every patient or every 30 minutes or so. Once moist from respirations they are even less effective. After 2 hours they are no more effective at preventing transmission by the user than no mask. I would imagine the same would be if attempting to use them to prevent transmission to the user.

Edit: I checked the coronavirus reports for today. HK reported 7 new diagnoses and 1 death today.

 

[dead dog]

Another perspective:

When I was facing a life and death procedure, I kept asking my doctor about my survival statistics. He replied: “In a population of 100, 40 will live, 60 will die. That is, from a scientific and medical perspective, you have a 40% survival rate. But you are not a population of 100. You are a population of one. You will either live or die. You are 100% dead or 100% alive. You will either end up in the 40% group or the 60% group. Do you I understand what I’m trying to say?”

That was a very harsh statement at the time and I never asked him about statistics again. Make of it what you will.

That's like in sports, you either win or lose, there is no try. It's good you try, but it's in third place.

 

[Dogbowl]

I think with the case in Hong Kong, many factors helped slow the spread of the virus.

1. Previous extensive experience with SARS;

2. Top notch healthcare system;

3. Almost completely closed borders to China, albeit slowly;

4. Immediate and strong response from local residents to wash hands, wear masks, sanitize, avoid crowds, etc. So in doing that everyone was in the fight from the beginning. If anyone was infected themselves and they did not know it at the time, the fact that they were wearing masks helped minimize the spread to others. I am very aware of what the doctors and medical professionals are saying about masks and the shortage problem. While I agree everyone wearing masks is creating a shortage, I don’t agree that everyone wearing masks is not helping slow the spread. And I mean everyone, not just a small portion of society. I highly doubt the West will have everyone wearing masks because the message is very different from what is being said in the East. There’s a cultural aspect to this and the attitudes and response to this are just very different. In the East, not wearing masks is stigmatized. In the West, it’s the opposite.

Just a nugget of interesting info: our city had 3 infected people who arrived on a plane from China, all were wearing masks on the plane and went into voluntary isolation immediately upon arriving. No new cases ever resulted from those 3 initial cases. Then the cases coming from China just stopped due to border closures. And we had no new cases for a few weeks. Nada. This was a huge surprise because we have a large Chinese population here. We were expecting a lot more cases. Now we have over 30 cases, all of them coming from outside Asia: Iran, Italy, France, Las Vegas, Colorado, etc. Few, if any, were wearing masks on the plane nor self isolated upon arrival. These people went out in public doing regular life stuff after arriving. Now our health officials are scrambling to track down everyone that they might’ve infected, including those on public transit. My only point here is that the human/community response and cultural attitudes about this are so different. Coming from both an Eastern and Western cultural background, the difference is very stark.

 

[Angelo Farina]

My only point here is that the human/community response and cultural attitudes about this are so different. Coming from both an Eastern and Western cultural background, the difference is very stark.

Definitely true. Italy was hit hard for the way we interact, with a lot of proximity, body contact, intense, frequent and diverse social and cultural activities, etc. .
Our "Patient #1" infected hundredths of people as he was a young, socially active, involved in many sport activities, and travelling a lot. With so many contacts, it had been impossible to trace "patient #0".
It is very hard to force Italians to stay at home, avoid human contacts, stop travelling, etc...
Add to this the fact that our average age is very high, so the number of people getting seriously the disease is much larger than in "young" countries as the Eastern emerging powers...

 

[greeniguana]

My great grandfather died of the flu when he was serving in 1918.

Something to keep in mind; the Spanish flu sort of petered out during the heat of summer in 1918, only to come raging back in the fall in a second wave.

 

[Divin'Papaw]

It does make me thankful that I live in South Florida and that all my diving is local!

 

[OceanEyes]

While not terribly concerned with getting ill myself, I have several friends and one family member with immunodeficiencies, and am in close proximity to many other people daily. I would hate to be the cause of someone else contracting the virus through personal transmission.

I just returned from a brief trip, and am not scheduled to travel again until May when I hope to go to Japan and Truk. As of now, I would be denied access to The Federated States Of Micronesia, though the current restrictions may change before I head across the Pacific. My air carrier has reduced the frequency of some of flights along my routing, but has yet to inform me that any of my bookings have been cancelled.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have made several score of trips over the years, and have never seen fit to purchase trip insurance. Even if I lose the total cost of my coming venture, I’m still way ahead of the game in the long run, having avoided paying for insurance many, many times. In this instance, should the airline cancel any of my flights, I should recoup the airfare, but sacrifice all of my other expenses. If I decide to cancel, then I’ll lose the whole enchilada. While I won’t be very happy about that, I can live with it.

There is also the possibility that I can make the trip as planned, but be involuntarily quarantined upon my return. Depending on the status of governmental policy as my departure date nears, that may provide me with the incentive to cancel the journey entirely.

As to the OP’s original query regarding whether the virus would prevent me from booking trips this year:

At this time, I would not be overly eager to book any non-essential travel.

 

[divinh]

As I am a vacation diver, I would very much like to book my next dive trip, as it will be year since, come mid-April. I'm not too concerned about getting sick, but I wonder if my desire to book a trip should be tempered, as the desire is from privilege and the more sensible thing to do is to sit it out, for the common good?