Posted on 03/29/2003 5:34:47 AM PST by TaxRelief
TORONTO --Arriving passengers aren't being properly screened for SARS at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, according to a doctor and nurse returning from a tourist trip to China. "If we're having quarantines and hospital closures, we should not have a leaky border," said Marshall Redhill, who arrived in Toronto on Thursday night after a 16-day trip to China during which he was in at least eight cities and on four domestic flights. "We're giving people a false sense of security. It's totally inadequate surveillance. We need to have nursing staff at the airport." Dr. Redhill described a single perfunctory question at Customs and Immigration. After accepting his declaration form, the officer asked if he had experienced "any symptoms" of SARS. The officer didn't describe the symptoms. They were written on a yellow flyer, in small print, taped to the side of the glass booth facing away from travellers. "We're really concerned about the fact that we waltzed through the airport," said his wife Linda, a nurse. Nor was there anyone at Terminal 2 to brief them on SARS and what precautions they might take.
The Redhills said there were 25 people in their tour group. "Some of them went to work this morning, without masks," Mrs. Redhill said. But the Centenary Hospital in Scarborough, where Dr. Redhill is a obstretician-gynecologist, told him he should stay away from the hospital and his office, which isn't on hospital grounds. The Redhills were originally routed Shanghai-Hong Kong-Toronto on their way home. But they and nine others from the group were concerned enough about SARS to seek an alternate route through San Francisco. The rest of the tour group travelled through Hong Kong.
The Redhills spent the day phoning Health Canada and other authorities, with disappointing results. Health Canada told them they didn't need to wear masks. They couldn't get through on Toronto's jammed SARS hot line. (At a press conference yesterday, officials admitted they could handle only 1,000 of 25,000 calls on Thursday.)
Tens of thousands of North Americans are going to needlessly die because these evil, incompetent bureaucrats refuse to use simple public health measures to stop this completely preventable disease NOW. The AIDS crisis is a perfect example of what happens when you suspend scientific public health measures at the altar of PC correctness.
And I predict a massive blow to our economy when this disease becomes endemic, once a critical mass of cases is allowed to exist. Our cities and workplaces will be ghost towns for months!
It wouldn't surprise me if more Americans die of SARS than from fighting in Iraq.
Worldwide this is already the case.
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