Interesting, amusing on-the-ground observations of the swine flu panic in Korea.

Should go without saying that swine flu has been in the news a lot both at home and in South Korea. The latest news is that South Korea plans to vaccinate 10 million against the flu, and there's currently debate over who should receive priority. Word also is that schools across the country could close if "the alert level is raised." The head of Incheon Medical Center, the hospital that has treated the most number of swine flu patients, has said that Korea is overreacting to the threat of this flu. Commenter Annalisa Hessle---not a doctor, I confess---made the same point in a post last week, saying that 3,000 cases of swine flu (at the time) in a densely-populated country of roughly 50 million

does not indicate any need for national panic.

Jason from kimchi-icecream collected some thoughts yesterday, boiling things down to seven points:

The formula for this disaster basically boils down to these things.

1) As a general rule in Korea when someone sneezes and/or coughs they don't cover their nose and mouth.
2) Hand washing with hot water, soap, and for an appropriate length of time is also not common.
3) School bathrooms, and public washrooms in Korea, all too often do not have soap.
4) Students are not encouraged consistently to cover their noses and mouths when they sneeze and cough.
5) There is a general cultural attitude that believes you MUST go to school and/or work regardless of how sick you may be. This guarantees prolonging illnesses and infecting others in the schools and workplaces of Korea.
6) The general public is not educated about H1N1's basic facts: the signs and symptoms, how it is transmitted, and what they should do if they believe they have H1N1.
7) In Korean schools it is the students that clean the schools. The notion that students have the proper training on how to sanitize school classrooms, bathrooms, and the entire building properly is utter nonsense. Add to the mix that students do not generally use cleaning chemicals (and they shouldn't be using them, they're dangerous to use too) when they clean the schools each day and you get the formula for disaster.

A Jeonnam-based blogger, Places and Words, echoes a lot of that in her observations from a couple days ago:

I'm not so sure what the feel is back in the states, but all of the Koreans around me are acting I-N-S-A-N-E. They are constantly worried about swine flue, but they aren't actively doing anything to prevent the spread of it, or even the spread of any other virus such as the common cold. There's still no adequate soap in bathrooms, none in the bathroom at my school. No one covers their mouths to sneeze or cough. I've never ever seen any of my students wash their hands at any time throughout the day. They brush their teeth at least ten times but never wash their hands. They share everything- lollipops, chopsticks, apples-which isn't a bad thing but when you're worried about a pandemic, well, I guess you should practice a bit more caution. There is mandatory quarantine for anyone who's left the country. That's 7 days one is supposed to stay confined to their homes. However, in my city at least, myself and all of my friends have confirmed that none of the Koreans have taken the quarantine and showed up to work the very next day after they returned from a trip abroad. My own co-teacher told me they don't have to worry as much because it is a virus from the Mexicans and not from Koreans. And she's an 'educated' woman! A friend emailed today to say they are temperature checking all of the students that walk through the front gate at his school, but they are not changing the cover on the thermometer. Ew. Even if one of the teachers presented with swine flu symptons (fever, cough, etc.) the chances of them staying out of school are extremely low. In the past, I was teaching a class and the homeroom teacher was very sick. The class was being observed by student teachers so she said she couldn't just go to the lounge to take a nap. Instead, she stood up at the frotn with me, coughing until she finally vomitted all over her shoes. She went to the bathroom for two minutes and came back saying she had the flu but she would stay teaching. How ridiculous is that? Can you guess how many of her students presented with flu-like symptons during that week? Yeah, a lot. I basically gave up on that class because half of them had their heads on their desks because they were so sick.

Like her, apparently, my fingers also automatically type "flue" each time I post something about it. I also type "bridge" each time I write about international marriage and a foreign "bride."

I've missed out on this latest round of swine flu mania in Korea, but like most other people have noted the disparity between the panic and the lack of basic preventative measures taken by Koreans to stop the spread of disease. From the beginning, shortly before the first case of swine flu was found in a Korean, the Korean Center for Disease Control has been advising basic precautions:

The best method is prevention. Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it. Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hand cleaners are also effective.

Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread that way.

Also, try to avoid close contact with sick people. If you feel sick, the government recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.

To which I joked there are "No preventative measures against swine flu in Korea," but some people didn't get it. Actually, it turns out that advice up there was ripped off from the US Center for Disease Control website, but whatever.

Rather than summarize everything that's been happening in Korea vis-a-vis the flu this year, I'll just recommend you read through the "Swine flu in Korea" category because there's a lot of good stuff in there---a lot of exclusive stuff, too---that should complement what you've been reading in the papers and on the other blogs.