WHO extends its SARS-related travel advice to Beijing and Shanxi province in China and to Toronto, Canada

Events in Canada I'm still planning to attend:

Science Fiction Research Association, UniversityÝofÝGuelph, Jun 25-29, 2003

American Library Association, Toronto, June 19-25

Returning to its binational roots, the American Library Association will head to Canada for a rare joint conference in Toronto, June 19-25.Ý A record number of programs and events will be available to more than 25,000 Canadian and U.S. librarians, publishers and guests.

And, oh yes, the Worldcon:
Torcon 3, The 61st World Science Fiction Convention, Toronto, August 28-September 1, 2003

One hopes this SARS situation clears up soon. I am the kind of person who would die of it if I caught it, since I have a history of lung problems.

From The Globe and Mail

Yesterday, the World Health Organization clapped the city of Toronto into quarantine. SARS became Toronto's 9/11, the worst crisis in its history. Despite the judgment of the WHO, it's not a health crisis -- yet. It's a crisis of perceptions. The WHO has more or less declared that Toronto has been hit by a deadly terrorist disease, and the world's inclined to believe it.Never mind that the odds of getting SARS remain vanishingly small. In the United States, where the daily SARS news is devoured like the latest chapter in a Michael Crichton thriller, Toronto is now assumed to be as perilous as any pestilential Third World cesspit. And even if it's not, why take a chance?

A couple of measures which I think ought to be tried against SARS, given that it's related to the common cold: sucking on zinc losenges to keep from getting it, and Viropharma's anti-viral drug PICOVIR (pleconeril): it was designed as a cure for the common cold and was not effective enough given the actual low severity of colds in the first place. It is not in commercial production, so they may not have tried it on SARS. But it seems to me that it might work. (I used to own Viropharma stock, but don't anymore.)