Tuesday 5 May 2009

"We Won't Diagnose You With Swine Flu If You Might Have It"

As my slow return to lucidity continues, it looks like everyone else is going the opposite way. My WTF-Moment of the Day happened when I read this article in the Mainichi. You remember how Japan was getting ready to fight the swine-flu virus by setting up hundreds of emergency clinics and heat-scanning people and encouraging everyone to wear thin, permeable bits of cotton over their faces? Of course you do, that was in the news yesterday - your brain only needs 24 hours of storage space to remember that.


Mr. Porky's foil-sealed Bag of DEATH

Well today it's being reported that people with any kind of fever are being turned away by doctors and hospitals. They've also refused medical-examinations to people who mention that they have a foreign friend. The potential infected are being sent to public health centres (which are not actually equipped to test for the H1N1 virus), or just having doors slammed in their faces amidst shrieks of "Unclean! Unclean!".

So on the one hand they've set up more facilities for treating the virus than anywhere else in the world, but on the other hand they're refusing to send the possibly-infected to places that might be equipped to deal with them. There's a paradox here somewhere, I know there is. I can smell it.


Bird Flu and Swine Flu collide... with hilarious results

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