I'll Have The Salmonella Please

Airline food's bad at the best of times, but if you're soon to hop on a British Airways flight to or from Bermuda, right now you have more reason to worry than most.

...Dozens of passengers and several crew fell sick on board a British Airways flight which arrived in Bermuda on Thursday night. At least 30 children fell sick and the Saturday night London-bound flight from Bermuda had to be cancelled because six crew were too ill to fly back. That flight left [on Sunday] night while [Sunday] night's regular flight was postponed until [Monday] after more staff became sick. Sickness also affected members of the Bermuda girls gymnastic team which flew from Bermuda to London on Thursday night.

Still, as a colleague of mine observed, the affected passengers were all travelling in economy. If you're not prepared to spend over $4,000 on a Club ticket, what do you expect?

Comments

[ace on 26.10.04 at 09:27]

I don't think this is a case of food poisoning.

First off, the pilots got sick...I doubt they were eating the economy class food. Secondly, I called up the parents of a friend of my son on Sunday to see if their little boy could come over and play with my kid. The mother answered the phone and sounded like "death warmed over". She had been up with her son who had all the symptoms of this illness. None of them were on this BA flight and none had any contact with anyone from this flight. He did play with some friends the day before though, who could easily had some contact with someone who was on the plane.

The RG this morning is reporting a possible virus. I tend to agree.

Last year my mother-in-law visited us from Toronto. On the evening of day two of her stay she became VIOLENTLY ill and this lasted the whole night and she was only able to "surface" from the bathroom and/or bedroom at about 1.00pm the next day looking as if she had been drained of most of her "life force".

That night I had a huge spagetti dinner. At about 11.00pm I started to feel a bit ill and decided to go to bed. By 1.00am the next morning I was pulling strings of half eaten spagetti out of my nose after violently throwing up.

Every twenty minutes for the rest of the night I was sick to my stomach. Sorry for the graphical imagery but lets just say that for most of the night the force of throwing up from my mouth was forcing my "other end" to erupt at the same time.

I thought I was going to die. In fact I would have welcomed it.

A few days later I spoke to a friend of mine in Toronto. I began to tell him the story, whereupon he began to relate a very similar scenario that happened to him a few weeks before.

He actually was tested and turned up positive for the Norwalk virus. His story was so similar to mine that the two of us were able to laugh about how sick we felt. I had to stop the conversation because laughing was still very difficult as my poor stomach was so tender from all the vomiting.

What was interesting about this virus is it's selectivity. My mother-in-law and I were both ill with it. My wife and two (at the time) children were never affected. We all ate the same food and we all were under the same roof.

This bug sounds very similar to that.

[loki on 26.10.04 at 12:08]

Sounds like a virus to me, too. If both pilots got sick, it's pretty unlikely to be food poisoning, because the pilots are required to eat different meals so as to prevent them from both coming down with food poisoning mid-flight. If it is a virus, it doesn't remotely surprise me that it should have mainly affected members of Economy Class: it's well known that the air circulation rate in Economy is so poor that the chance of viral infection if one person is carrying the virus is far higher in Economy than Club and First Class.

[Sunil on 26.10.04 at 14:40]

Thought I would point out that food poisoning can be caused by viruses, one of the ones that does this being the Norwalk virus. It isn't airborne. There is really nothing unusual about some people being resistant to certain infections.

[ace on 26.10.04 at 14:48]

http://www.astdhpphe.org/infect/norwalk.html

Very interesting and this certainly appears to be what has happened.

But (from the site linked above):

"The viruses are passed in the stool of infected persons. People get infected by swallowing stool-contaminated food or water. Outbreaks in the United States are often linked to raw oysters."

Ewwwwwww.....somewhere along the way I must have eaten food with contaminated poo in it? Two of us in one house did, but three others didn't? We certainly didn't eat any osyters.

Weird.

[Sunil on 26.10.04 at 19:16]

On the bright side, you may have only eaten puke, rather than poo.

And it’s only tiny amounts you need to get ill - the sort of traces an infected person would leave on a toilet door handle if they didn’t wash their hands properly. They have different toilets for first and economy class, as well as different air.

That said, it was probably in the salad. Much more dangerous than oysters, salad is.

[kristen on 26.10.04 at 19:30]

Ugh! I'm about to hop on a plane to London... this is.. ugh! UGH!

Ooh.. wonder if I can milk my "fear" for a free upgrade?

[ace on 26.10.04 at 19:31]

"On the bright side, you may have only eaten puke, rather than poo."

Bright side? lol

You are right about salad though. A guy who I met in Canada damn near died from some bug he picked up in a 5 Star hotel in the DR.

Turned out the person who prepared the salad was infected with whatever he got and it almost caused his liver, or kidneys (or both) to shut down.

[kristen on 27.10.04 at 13:18]

ladies and gentleman, may i stress the importance of purell.

[ace on 27.10.04 at 13:20]

What's that Kristen? Soap?

How are you doing? Flight okay?

[Kristen on 01.11.04 at 21:08]

I leave in two weeks and three days!

Will let you know then.

Purell is an anti-bacterial gel. Cary it around with me everywhere. :)

[kristen on 01.11.04 at 21:15]

PURELL Instant Hand Sanitizer is a refreshing alcohol-based instant hand sanitizer that in as little as 15 seconds, kills 99.99% of most common germs that may cause illness.

Germy hands are the #1 way people get sick. PURELL kills the germs that may make you and your family sick, no matter where you are.

PURELL is as safe on hands as regular soap and water and you can use it as often as you need. Specially formulated with moisturizers, PURELL leaves hands feeling soft and refreshed.

SOURCE: www.purell.com

;)

[ace on 01.11.04 at 22:40]

Are you like the Purell sales rep in Bermuda? ;)

Good idea though.