When we returned from the US on April 28, it was the very beginning of the swine flu scare.
Our plane was boarded by half a dozen officials who handed out questionnaires about our health. They were followed a man in a mask, gloves and surgical gown who walked through the plane with a thermographic scanner while the rest of his team realised they should have been wearing masks and ran off to change costumes before handing out the rest of the forms.
Eleven days after we landed, when the flu would have had sufficient time to incubate, I received a phone call from the government’s special “fever clinic.” They were checking up on us. Had we felt any flu symptoms since we returned? I was able to assure them that we were healthy and not feverish.
Interestingly, the four cases of H1N1 here in Japan are all from one school trip to Canada. There is also a student in China who returned from Canada with the flu. I wonder if they had the same vector? Watch out for those school trips to Canada, I guess.
WHO says there are now just about 6,000 confirmed cases worldwide. That is not even 0.001% of the world’s 6.7 billion people. And with about 60 deaths in 6,000 people, H1N1 has a 1% death rate, which is about the same mortality rate as simply being over 60 years old.
I think we can all calm down now.
I hear ya!
After going through the TB debacle last year, i have realised how f**ked the media is. TB infects approximately 1 person every second. But not in ‘proper’ countries. Soon as something is near the US or EU or Japan, panic erupts.
And i could rant on & on & on for hours. But i will stop here….but one last point…Japan has double the rate of TB than most western European countries. Don’t hear about THAT on the news, do you?
I just got back from the states, too. The Yamanashi procedure, though,is daily telephone calls from the health department requiring reports on my body temperature for every morning and night and I need to be sure to take my temp at 12 hour intervals………
Posted by: wendy on May 22, 2009 01:35 PM