The last thing you want to happen during a holiday travel is to get sick. Well since last month, the 2019-nCoV (2019 novel CoronaVirus) has ruined the holiday trip of many many people and in some serious cases it has also taken 213 lives (as of today).

2019-nCoV a new strand of human transmissible coronavirus

The 2019-nCoV was first detected early December 2019 and an outbreak was detected in Wuhan (China) mid-December 2019. Its origin is said to be coming from bats being sold illegally as food in an food market in Huanan that sells live animals from around the world. However, according to LiveScience no bats were sold in the Huanan food market so it has to be through an intermediate host animal that was infected by consuming a bat as described by CNN

^{Source: WSJ}

Fear is the path to the Dark Side

According to the W.H.O., The Flu (Influenza) kills 650 000 people every year, yet many people are skipping their Flu shots and don't mind taking public transports and turning up at work coughing and sneezing.

Thanks to all the media coverage, the awareness of 2019-nCoV is widespread and has both positive and negative impacts. On the good side of things, thanks to China herculean effort to control outbreak and share the findings on the virus, other countries are now able to get ready to prevent an epidemic. On the negative side, it is triggering fear amongst many which then leads to racism attacks and misinformation.

2019-nCoV is to be taken seriously but we should all (the whole world) work together and help each other not blaming other countries for their different culture or eating habits.

Why do Chinese people eat all sort of animals including dogs and cats?

Actually, not all Chinese people eat all sort of animals including dogs and cats!

China has a large and diverse population and is its cuisine. Not all Chinese people eat strange things and the reason behind the consumption of all things that moves is coming from its history and culture.

As we all know, China as a huge population and providing enough resource for every one had been a struggle. Brutal famines made a lot of victims so people had to survive by eating what ever they can put their hands on.

Medicinal properties from eating certain animals or parts of animals are coming from deep believes back from many generations. The lack of easy and affordable access education didn't help either.

My wife is Vietnamese but one striking stories she told me was that when she was still a kid, her father was in jail for fighting against the communism and got kicked out of the family home and went in the jungle to build their new home. Eventually, the communists also caught her now single mum of many kids while she was "illegally" dealing rice (yeah, not drug) to feed the kids. So they ended up several years on their own catching what ever they could to eat, some times eating clams day in day out or cooking snakes or whatever animal that they can catch.

I'm Vietnamese, born in Lao. I left Lao for New Caledonia when I was 2 years old but my parents and grand parents were also born in Lao. During their times, it was not unusual to survive on just rice and fish sauce for several days. There were times when my grand parents had to not eat so that my parents and their siblings could. My mum often counted stories of how she struggles getting enough food so that she can breast feed me and she believed it was due to her poor diet that I often felt sick.

Another criteria is the Buddhist ideology, like the Vietnamese people, Chinese people try waste as little food as possible and make use of anything that is available. That being said, many Buddhist followers in China and other Asian countries are vegetarians.

It's time to act based on facts

The whole world needs to come as one and share effort to stop the progress of this new virus.

As of now, the numbers being shown is far from being comparable to the one of other viruses so racism attacks are not acceptable (they never are).

If you have travelled to a high risk region, on your return, put yourself in self-isolation. 14 days is the recommended time which equals to the maximum observed incubation period of the 2019-nCoV virus plus some safety net days. If you start getting a fever or other symptoms such as chest tightness, fever, cough, shortness of breath and respiratory issues. Wear a medical mask to prevent spreading the virus on others and on nearby surfaces.

If you have friends or family members who have travelled to China recently, help them during their self-isolation. Wearing a mask wouldn't help you much when trying to prevent to catch the airborne virus unless it's a mask that fully seals your face but then your eyes are still another way for the coronavirus to get into your body.

Simple but effective hygiene practices go a long way:

• Wash your hands frequently for at least 20 seconds
• Bring some hands sanitizer with you to use where you don't have nearby access to clean water.
• Cough/sneeze in a tissue and get rid of it. Do not cough/sneeze in your arm/elbow. You are just loading up that area with germs and then the next time you cross your arms your hands are now loaded and you start spreading the germs out by touching the next object.
• In doubt, don't get too close to infants and young children as their immune system is weaker and are more prone to severe reactions. Same goes for elderly people.
• Avoid hand-to-face or wash them first. The 2019-nCoV cannot go through our skin and requires us to bring it to the path way into our body.
• Do not share food utensils.

What is up with me?

As you could see from the photo above, me wearing a mask is not just for the sake of this article. Three days ago, I started to feel weird, and then for the next two consecutive days, I got a constant fever with headache, skin soreness and diarrhoea. No cough, no respiratory issues so I thought I got food poisoned from eating oysters the day before feeling unwell. For safety measures amid these health events, I went to the local clinic to get my blood tested. They also performed an ultrasound scan of my abdomen and confirmed a disfunctioning intestine. The blood test, however, showed that I had a drop of potassium level and that I have contracted the Dengue Fever virus. They sent me home with a bunch of medicine to take including a fever reducing drug, some salts and vitamins to compensate for the inability to digest food properly and some drugs for the diarrhoea.

I really don't want to see my Dengue Fever to evolve into a Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever. It had been almost three days of total exhaustion and any food intake just comes out as is... Lucky as of today, I have ups and downs which allows me to get to the clinic but I can't imagine how this would feel like if it evolves into a more severe case.

So I'm also looking for some alternative treatments and found out there are some positive preliminary reports

My wife is now sorting our my VISA extension and we are re-scheduling our flight back to Australia just to be safe, don't want to feel sick in an airport or being delayed by the screenings at our arrival.

For this new year of the rat, a flying rat is ruining it all.