Burning Lemons

Note: This post will probably be out of date by the time I post it. I had to revise it twice in the 5 minutes I spent writing it.

• Death toll so far – 86 (All in Mexico)
• 1,300 Mexicans suspected of having illness given “all-clear”. Unclear if this means they have recovered or if they never had the disease at all.
• Most public facilities in Mexico city closed until May 6 - includes churches, schools and other major gathering points
• US cases confirmed in Texas, Ohio, New York and California
• Texas to close 14 schools in the Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City district
  
• 6 cases confirmed in three separate parts of Canada
• 6 cases suspected in Spain
• Possible that cases have developed in Airdrie, Scotland and Northampton
• Further suspected cases in New Zealand, France and Israel
• Governement spokesman says it is: “Highly likely” that New Zealand cases are swine flu but “there is no guarantee”
• Health emergency declared in US (government playing down seriousness of declaration. Claims that the decision is for mainly bureaucratic reasons).
• WHO Emergency meeting on Tuesday to co-ordinate international response
• 100 students ill with “flu-like” symptoms at New York prep school – 5 students at same school confirmed to have disease. However symptoms described as “mild”
• Several countries have begun medical screening of passengers arriving from Mexico

Quick end of day roundup

So far despite the wide spread of suspected cases across 3 continents there have only been confirmed cases in North America. The only deaths so far have been in Mexico and all patients in other countries are displaying “mild” symptoms and many are said to be progressing well.

The UK governement has not issued any advice against travelling to Mexico and the country’s borders and airports remain open as normal although many countries are now carrying out very basic checks on travllers arriving from Mexico these mainly consists of a few simple questions.

The raising of the threat level to emergency by the US governement is so far only for administrative reason and does not represent any major change in the governements view of events.

Above all in all locations but certain areas of Mexico the public are being urged to go about their lives as normal unless they develop flu-like symptoms in which case they are urged to stay at home. People displaying such symptoms should not go to a hospital unless they are displaying symptoms that would cause them to seek treatment under normal circumstances to avoid over-burdening hospitals. General precautions such as hand-washing are advised. The US governement have also pointed out that so far it does not appear that one can catch the disease by eating infected pork

That’s all for tonight - I will have another post tomorrow in the mean time stay with the excellent @BreakingNews account on Twitter @klustout presenter of CNN International’s CNN Today morning programme from Hong Kong will also be posting updates.

All the information in the post above is (to the best of my knowledge) correct and current as of 21:55 GMT on April 26 2009.

Update 1: Added information on new outbreak in Canada
Update 2: Added information about health screening
Update 3: Added New Zealand and Israel to list of countries with suspected cases and revised total number of cases in Canada down to 6 (my mistake)
Update 4: Added information about case statistics in Mexico
Update 5: Added information about closure of facilities in Mexico city and schools in Texas
Update 6: Removed word “possible” from information about patients in Scotland following Nicola Sturgeon interview and added details of Northampton case
Update 7: Added additional information about case in France
Update 8: Added wrapup

Data collected from @BreakingNews, @felix85, @mpoppel, @rosemaryCNN, France 24, BBC World Service, BBC News Channel and Reuters

Last night I got back from a trip to France. During the long time spent in various airports and on planes I got thinking about the remarkable changes that have occurred in European air travel over the last 15 years. Before about 1995 if you wanted to fly from here in Scotland to a regional airport in lets say France or Germany (totally hypothetically I’ll say Glasgow-Perpignan) you would have been handing over the better part of about £500 and would have to take at least 3 flights, and woe betide you if you didn’t plan to spend a Saturday night in your destination, if you didn’t that could be up to another £1000 poured straight into the pockets of your chosen national carrier.

Competition did exist of course (well from around the 1970s onwards) but this was mainly in the form of charter airlines flying from regional airports to sunshine spots in Spain, Portugal and Greece. The flights were infrequent, unreliable and still not particularly cheap.

Enter Ryanair and easyJet, arguments rage to this day over who was the first true no-frills airline, easyJet’s first flight was in November 1995 and Ryanair born out of a full-service Irish regional airline started it’s slow, gradual transformation to its current low-cost model in the early 1990s. What is certain though is the bang that they made. Although the change was slow at first expansion was rapid for the two airlines. Validation for the sector came shortly afterwards when British Airways launched its own no-frills airline in the form of Go (later swallowed by easyJet).

What the revolution has done is placed previously small unheard of places on the map. Ryanair in particular with its policy of flying from smaller regional airports (and then lying about their location) has caused explosive growth for certain parts of Europe. Hahn, 70 miles from Frankfurt in The Rhineland-Pfaltz region of Germany went from being a closed US Air Force base to a low-cost hub with 40 flights every day to destination across Europe in just 10 years. Ryanair has proved that it is economically possible to make money flying about 150 people a day from the Western German countryside to The North of Spain.

And so we come to my flight (see how I did that?). I paid £30 to fly around 1200 miles on two flights, while I give that many fares are much higher I have got fares like this time and again and I thin that whatever you may make of Ryanair you must admit the contribution it has made to growth in Europe and regeneration of deprived areas over the last 10 years.