I said you should be cool, but apparently, now is the time to panic, because it happened! (Click here for a German blog article by tabibito!)
So, now please: Everybody panic!
And I quote from the first comment by feitclub 2009-05-09 10:43:18:
Yes, a friend of mine arrived from the US last Friday and they called him at our place a few days later to confirm that he hadn’t gotten sick. Not sure what they would have done had he become sick (too late to quarantine, certainly) but they are definitely following up on their flimsy health inspections.
“They” is, as far as I understand it, the local Japanese government. That means, that “they” knew when, where and how long this guy was in a foreign country. I don’t like this. It’s definitly not a good sign if your government knows every single move and step you make. All - the - time! That sounds like a totalitarian system as George Orwell described it in his novel 1984.
Of course, I exaggerate, but then I remember my time being in Japan at a Japanese university as an exhange student and it was the same. They always wanted to know when and where I was or where and how long I wanted to go somewhere. And of course they wanted to know all the details, too. I had more than one argument with the stuff in the office about this, because I am a grown up and it’s my own fucking business. And don’t get me started with fingerprints and all the security shit at the airport. Privacy, you know that term?!
Ok, at least for the university I think it maybe has something to do with the fact that I was like 6 to 10 years older than the average Japanese student. That and the fact that the authorities at the university (professors, teachers, office personal) treat their students like little kids and they couldn’t really handle a foreigner being way older and a student at the same time.
Next thing that I think is strange is the following (quoted from the comment by Ken Y-N 2009-05-09 22:32:50):
On Friday we got new office rules - all overseas trips to anywhere cancelled and if you or your family have been/go abroad, on return you must spend 10 days at home monitoring your own health. Not sure if the company expects the days to come off your own holiday allowance
So, what happens if you are really sick and because of the incubation period you don’t really realize until you’ve already been to the local mall, the local kindergarten, local station, the local ramen-ya, onsen, whatever and infected several dozen other people in the first, let’s say, four or five days?
It’s just crazy. I, personally, think that those paranoid overreactions are kinda typical Japanese. Maybe it’s the mass media’s fault for making such a fuss about the flu in the very beginning, because IMHO the Japanese people are even more influenceable than the German people.
But that’s just my 2 cents.
And: Told you! People DIE when you turn them down at the door of a hospital: Von sieben Kliniken abgewiesen. Japaner stirbt an Herzinfarkt (German article)
Some random links about the topic:
New Way To be A F*cked Gaijin - And I quote from the #4 comment by TennoChinko who himself quotes Chris B who wrote a comment on Debito’s blog article “Wash Post on GOJ border controls of Swine Flu, Mainichi/Kyodo on hospitals turning away J with fevers or NJ friends“:
Hence those who are seeking to play down this virus are no different from those who remained at their desks after the planes hit the twin towers in 9/11 and they risk bringing disaster to us all.
If you ask me, I rather stay put at my desk than to panic like everybody else. There are more interesting comments and post over at the fucked gaijin forum and at Debito’s blog post. You should read those too if you are interested.
Anyway, here are some more links:
Health minister says domestic outbreak of new flu ‘matter of time’
Osaka school holds assembly to explain new flu infections to students
Flu quarantine in Japan: this is an interesting short Japanese news clips (translation script is provided right beneath the embedded video).
