Did IBF make the correct decision in postponing the World Championships?

Although I know that their decision was just to make the chances of SARS affecting everyone to 0, I still thought SARS is big in UK at all. There was a health report saying that SARS wasn't big in England and sporting events such as the IBF Championships should continue. But I guess they did it for the best of the players. It would be better to postpone 1 tournament and have everyone alive rather than go on with it and have someone affected.

 

I'm sad that it took them as long as it did to cancel it... considering they had to have had pressure from their sponsors, for the teams, and from pretty much everyone else. I think there's very little justification for keeping it on the same date given the current situation... even if the SARS thing is getting blown out of proportion.

 

Typo. It should say SARS isnt bag in UK at all.

 

Isn't bag? I think you got it right the first time with big?

Anyway i don't think the problem is that UK will be infecting players, but that the players and their support crew would bring the virus over TO the UK. If that's true then it would be a publicity nightmare for both the sponsor and IBF.

 

Doh! No wonder I hate English. Least I passed the literacy test Yeh, I meant big.

You got a point BRL, especially with all the Chinese coming in since China and those "other" countries such as HK are supposidly hit harder than TO.

 

Right decision

I always say badminton is my life so it is very hard for me to accept the fact that IBF had decided to postpone the WC 2003. However, it was the right decision as not everyone take badminton as "bigger than life" sports like me so in any event, if someone get infected by SARS because of WC would be disastrous.
Think in the positive way, badminton is not the only sports got affected.

 

A colleague once showed me in Toronto, Canada, in order to attract people
to crowd games like baseball, Canadian favorite team Blue Jay against
Texas Ranger (?) would have tickets at only $1. Then there was a fan with
a slogan, something like: "Hot dog $1.00, Coke $1.50 ...etc, Risk of Getting
SARS - priceless".

Apparently, the fan thought that being able to watch Blue Jay's game is
priceless. But I think he phrased his slogan rather incorrectly.

Anyhow, I don't think Toronto should have done that. Likewise, any major
gathering of crowds should be avoided at this time, until it's clear how SARS
could be spreaded and that we can get it under control.

While England now might not be of great risk, but remember that everything
starts small. Before was spread widely in China, it was once not considered
a risk either. Keep this perspective in mind.

I believe it's a wise decision to cancel WC. Nothing is worth more than one's
health and life. Not even badminton

 

Pff... i live *in* downtown... as in right in the middle of Chinatown in Toronto, and the odds of me getting SARS is astronomically low. I don't think the kind of crowd baseball games draw are at any risk significant risk of mass infection. (Or any more so than this time last year.) ANyways the $1 tickets were a good marketing gimmick, because they ended up making more money than otherwies.

 

Damn kwun that sucks

With the votes at 50/50 basically, we can tell this was a pretty damn hard decision to make for them as well with all the pressure.

 

The decision of the IBF may have been the right thing to do but it really made a lot of badminton fans upset, including me, of course.
Anyway, i agree to one of the posts that this SARS thing has been blown out of proportion so i attached this news report discussing this (its a little long but i believe its worth reading):

U.S. Virus Experts Slam SARS Panic
Mon April 28, 2003 04:54 PM ET
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People around the world are overreacting to SARS, creating a sense of panic that could overwhelm common-sense measures for containing the virus, top AIDS experts said on Monday.
Sensational media coverage of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which has killed 326 people worldwide, has fanned the flames, said David Baltimore, who won the 1975 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on how viruses cause disease.
"I think there has been overreaction," Baltimore, a leading AIDS researcher who is now president of the California Institute of Technology, said in a telephone interview.
"I have to agree with that," added Dr. David Ho, another top AIDS expert who heads the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York.
"Obviously, the fear comes from the fact that this is a novel disease. Many aspects of this epidemic are still mysterious. Fear of SARS is outrunning SARS per se," Ho added.
Ho and Baltimore ought to know. AIDS kills virtually everyone it infects without treatment and 20 years into the AIDS epidemic there is no cure and no vaccine.
In contrast, 94 percent of SARS patients recover.
Baltimore said World Health Organization moves have been appropriate, such as the controversial recommendation against travel to Toronto, where 21 people have died from SARS.
But boycotts of Chinese-owned businesses and scenes of people walking the streets of Hong Kong wearing surgical masks show that the general public does not understand the real dangers, Baltimore said.
"As much as overreaction, there has been a lack of balance, of putting it into perspective, because it is a real problem, no question," Baltimore said.
"But people clearly have reacted to it with a level of fear that is incommensurate with the size of the problem and I think it is getting in the way of a reasonable response."
"IRRESPONSIBLE" COVER-UP
The government in China, where SARS appears to have originated late last year, has been criticized for covering up the initial outbreak -- but officials there have said they feared creating the sort of panic that has been seen.
"The Chinese government was totally irresponsible in covering it up," Baltimore said. "We can't get away from that. It is a demonstration of the value of openness."
WHO has praised Vietnam for its response -- which was to immediately call for international help in handling its own outbreak of SARS. WHO has declared Vietnam to be free of SARS.
"This thing literally never would have happened on anything like the scale it happened if the Chinese had been open about it from the beginning," Baltimore said.
SARS, caused by a relative of one of the common cold viruses, has infected an estimated 5,300 people in nearly 30 countries. It has a mortality rate of about 6 percent, which is higher than comparable respiratory diseases such as influenza.
But while SARS is new and frightening, its impact, so far, has been minor. In a mild year, influenza and its complications kill an estimated 250,000 people around the world. Malaria kills at least a million, mostly children.
Yet earlier this month two Chinese runners were asked to pull out of a marathon in the Netherlands because of SARS fears. Many cities have reported people are avoiding Chinatown districts -- including New York, where no SARS cases have been confirmed.
"What happened to Hong Kong, for example, with the hotel occupancy rate at 2 percent, is an overreaction," Ho said.
Much can be blamed on media coverage, Baltimore said. "What we are seeing is a playing up of the things that make people worry," he said.
But, he added, perhaps scary reports are just giving readers and viewers what they want.
"In some sense people like to be frightened," he said. "And so, to some extent what I am saying is a denial of what seems to be a basic human instinct -- to get a sort of frisson (shiver) of excitement out of danger. And the press is playing into that."

 

IBF over reacted

The IBF's decision to postpone the WC is another example of over-reaction to SARS. Provided they screen the players in their home countries beforehand there shouldn't be any risk.

I would have thought that super fit athletes like the world class players who have been training intensively for the WC are not likely to have SARS anyway.....

 

Re: IBF over reacted

Hmmm... I'm not worrying so much about the players themselves (though as
so one once put it, their chances are also non-zeros). Rather, it's the spectators
that I'm concerned about; they're the one elbowing each other, shouting, chanting,
coughing.... And don't forget that this disease is highly contagious - the virus
apparent can survive outside of human bodies (surfaces that the carriers/patients
touch) for up to a day. And consider the number of medical care personnels who
contracted the diseases themselves (they must have been in the "best" protective
gears current state-of-the-art can offer them, don't you think).

Here's another story I heard from a recent news (or is that from Yahoo?): apparently
someone contracted with SARS (or suspected of contracted) knowingly attended
a funeral, putting hundreds of people at risk. Consider the response from this
forum, it won't surprise me that fanatics like this would show up in WC as
spectators (besides, don't forget there's a incubation period of approx. 10 days,
so the victims might not even know they already have it).

If we in the world communities at large are still being complacent, this could prove
to be dangerous. New cases of confirmed contraction and new deaths are reported
from China/H.K. and a few other places on a daily basis. This thing is far from over.

And Kwun, I can certainly empathize with those who suffer some financial losses.
I suppose they can still go there, except without the WC.

 

My reaction to lclazaro's excerpted news quote the so called experts are trying
to be "experts" in everything. If Dr. Ho, and those experts at Baltimore know so
much about the disease, I'd strongly urge them to share with the rest of the
world. As I mentioned before, new cases (confirmed, suspected, and deaths)
are reported on a daily basis, even here in the Bay Area. Have they offered
anything useful in confronting this disease yet?

Perhaps it's these "experts" who are trying to ge unconventional/controversial
to gain publicity?

Can we compare SARS with Influenza? I thought we've vaccine to fight
Influenza already, no?

AIDS is different from SARS - there things you can avoid doing to prevent
contraction (and this precaution seems to be working). In that sense, it's well
understood. Yes, people are recovering. But I also heard the virus is mutating.
People as young (and ought to be more resistent) as 20-30 somethings got killed.
Okay, there's a 5% mortality rate. Would you call this low? 5 people out of 100
contracting this would die. What happens if this's someone you know/love, or even
yourself.

Note that I'm not trying to scare anyone here. Just thought that we all ought to
be more cautious until the "real" experts understand exactly how the disease
is spread and what we can do to avoid/prevent contracting it, even if it means we
need to live our lives with surgical masks, albeit for a short while.

 

I think it was the right decision.

 

Do these "known" pneumonia have good ways to prevent/avoid? And how
contagious are they? I know I'm some what off topic here...

 

I'm not about to debate the relative risks of SARS because I am not an expert. This is why I think the IBF should have listened to the experts in UK government, UK sport, WHO, and it seems at the time the balance of expert opinion was that there waere no travel restrictions and events could go ahead in UK