Wednesday, September 23, 2009

H1N1 quarantine rules changing

"Why are we forbidden to leave the country during Chuseok? With 10,000 cases of swine flu in Korea, how is leaving the country putting us more at risk?"
LATER: BizarroBrian said: With roughly 10,000 cases in South Korea, and swine flu popping up in schools all over the place, seems you're at as great a risk in the country than out.
I hate to leave this quote (or paraphrase) unattributed but I cannot recall which blogger said it nor can I find it. If you think you're the original, tell me and I'll give you credit.

I can credit the DongA Ilbo, which has an article titled, "Gov't Bans School Closures due to H1N1 Flu".
I think the new guidelines are designed to reduce hysteria, to cut down on people being terrified of THE FLU. 'It's not so bad; take some precautions, but live your life.' I am concerned about the final paragraph quoted above: schools are busy places and hagwons work toward for the bottom line - giving them voluntary extra duties isn't the way to see them followed through.
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These days I am concerned about the state of my son's daycare. It is well-run and as clean as any place with hygiene-ignorant four-year-olds can be. my son could catch the flu there which would be a serious and scary problem, but also, what do I do if someone else catches it. I suppose the little guy could play in a corner of the classroom for a week on campus.

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It's three AM and I'm rambling a little:
The rumours at our school put the number of infected students at seven. I know of one class that was told to go home for a week as a classmate was infected, although I don't know how large that class was. We ESL teachers typically have classes of 20 students and several teachers work with the same major at any given time. It appears that the 20 students were sent home - but not the ESL teacher. in discussing the vaccine earlier, I wondered who should get it; the students who are at risk of being sick or the teachers who are at risk of (being sick and) carrying it widely. To leave the teacher in-place, capable of infecting a few hundred others, is strange

2 comments:

Brian said...

That might have been me:

http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2009/09/smoe-wants-to-curtail-your-vacation.html

Not simply are we at risk in Korea, but teachers are at risk in school, where not only are cases popping up all over the place, but they're incubators of disease.

kwandongbrian said...

You are now credited - hooray!

Schools are the incubators and we are the carriers.