Should I avoid Shanghai because of N7H9?

Anything on this is opinion.
Here’s mine.

As a relatively frequent China traveller I would happily enough go to Shanghai to ‘see the sights’ at present. I am seen as somewhat of a risk taker by friends BUT in fact I am just an engineer and so try to base my actions on informed input and not hype. I’d accept that there was a small chance of increased danger and a very very very very small enhanced chance of vast danger. See below. I’d carry alcohol hand sanitiser (as I always do) and use where it seemed good, and take more than average care of crowd and food situations BUT I’d accept crowded locations as required.

Pigeon is the current main target AFAIK – not chicken. That may suggest some suitable areas for more care in city areas.

PLUS: The following unlikely sounding story is true :-). I have a US contact who was 20 years with the CIA and who maintains contacts for business purposes (non nefarious) with large numbers of people in government, diplomatic, international aid circles etc. I spoke to him about 3 hours ago by Skype. He raised N7H9, said that people had unspecified concerns that it may be much more serious than was being advised and that it was potentially far worse than prior “bird flu” scares. I am sure of my source but would tend to have low confidence in news such as that which ‘filters through the network’. I would be surprised if it did in fact prove to be vastly worse than prior incidents. But, if you do manage to die of it, please do remember afterwards that you were warned :-).

What you have to know about bird flu is that it is first of all a transmission issue between live birds to humans, and then from those humans to others. So the people affected in the first line are the ones who go to open markets or deal with livestock. If you need to go to such markets or deal with live poultry, you might want to take a distance from this activity – in general, not only now. Bird flu has been an issue in Asia now since some years and you would be in a different type of risk all around, no matter of a specific current threat or not.

The main concern that people have right now in China is that the numbers reported by the government might be under reported. Some say by a factor of 10x. What is the true number is of course anybody’s guess. The experience from the SARS epidemic showed that China likes to keep anything that could cause a panic on a smaller flame.

The risk for the general public as opposed to tourists however is much higher since they go daily to live markets and buy food there. Tourists on the other hand are in very limited exposure since there is quite a path to make from the person selling the chicken, over the person buying it, through the cooks, the servers until you eat it at a restaurant. Keep in mind that at this point any disease is transmitted only through people, not through the chicken you eat anymore. General flu and other diseases are just as easily transmitted as bird flu. How often do you get a flu? Well, that risk is the same in the whole world just as in China.

So as long as you are staying clear of the markets, you are fine. Even if the current infection rate is under-reported by a factor of 10x, the chances that you are in contact with a virus in Shanghai through a restaurant is just about the same as anywhere else in China, and only remotely higher anywhere else in the world.

And, by the way, the current status is that Tamiflu seems to be a working remedy for N7H9, so even if you might contract something against all odds, this one does not seem the scary killer virus the press would like it to be to push up their sales figures.

One would always have to take news with the grain of salt they are in the business of selling themselves and keeping you glued to the screen/radio/computer.

According to WHO there is no ongoing evidence of human to human transmission so one would need to take caution as far as handling the birds and as far as general hygiene is concerned but as of today there is no real cause for alarm.

So I wouldn’t avoid Shanghai just try to stay away from “street meat” and other areas with questionable practices of slaughtering birds and other animals.