Pig Flu Becomes Big Pain in the Buta

Let the panic begin. Today Japanese health officials made the decision to quarantine any planes arriving from the Americas. When they land at Narita, guys in hazmat suits board the plane and physically inspect every passenger (I imagine guys with flashlights lurking through a dim and dusty cabin- like a scene out of CSI). When they are allowed to deplane, they walk infront of a camera that can read their body temperature. People who are warm set off an alarm (either because they have a fever, or because they are steaming mad for having to sit on the tarmac for hours):

Read the story about the panic in Japan HERE

Personally I think it is just a ploy to get these policies permanently implemented so that foreigners can be regularly inconvenienced and harassed to the point where no more of their filthy kind come to Japan anymore. Then things can be like they were in Edo period. Happy, blissfully ignorant times those were!

I was made aware of the level of panic when I got an urgent email from the president of Teachers College, Columbia indicating that someone with the flu was touching a computer keyboard in the computer lab. In typical New York fashion, she said that it was too late to do anything about it, so the infected keyboard would not be publicly hanged. She said that disinfecting the areas the student went would be "unnecessarily disruptive to our students during this busy time of the year." So, basically, she is saying: we can't be bothered beyond sending this spam to the entire campus community. But, we want to be part of the panic-spreading fun.

Here is a picture of a Japanese tourist visiting New York. I'm sure if he gets on the E train he will be mugged for his swanky mask:

Read the story about panic in New York HERE