The Swine Flu Scare

Today was Teacher's Day in China, which was lovely. I received lots of well-wishing messages and, even, a box of chocolates from one class. Usually, our universities give us a gift, as well... This year's present? A thermometer.

Swine flu fears had begun here even before we came home this summer. And, at one point, we were fearing getting quarantined at the airport. But all was well, and we haven't heard much about the infamous flu until this week. And suddenly, it's made a big comeback (the fear, not the actual flu).

Estimates from our city say that 1 student (that's right... 1) has swine flu and up to 20 students have shown flu-like symptoms. Not that they actually have the flu--just the symptoms. Seriously, in a city that has a student population of 250,000, I don't think that's so serious!

But apparently, I am wrong. For the past two weeks, people have been restricted from entering our campus unless they could prove they were a student or teacher here. If you were a student, but forgot your ID card, you were subject to a health check before entering. Other schools and businesses are taking similar measures, and students are sporting surgical masks to class. Soap has even made an appearance in the public bathrooms (the one good thing out of this)! Our friend at another university is required to send his supervisor a daily text message of his temperature reading. And now, I've been given a thermometer...

We are easily frustrated by the strange reactions to this virus. But at the same time, I guess when you have a country of 1.3 billion people living in close quarters, things spread quickly, as they learned with SARS a few years ago. Not to mention that health care is often at a bit of a different standard than some places. (Check out this story that happened in our city.) I just hope it all goes away soon--mostly, of course, for the public's health safety, but also for our sanity.