H一N一

Aside from the heat sensors as we walked through in the airport and the occasional mask wearing Chinese person, I haven't come in contact with the seemingly over publicized swine flu situation in China until this week. Last weekend two cases of swine flu (H一N一) were discovered at Heilongjiang University not far from HIT, and the last I heard they had spread to 48 cases (numbers stated in Chinese statistics). Harbin is now considered a high-risk city for the H1N1 virus. The woman who cleans our dorm came around with a thermometer for every student with the instructions to take our temperatures twice a day, and at any sign of a fever to go straight to the hospital. She looked at me rather strangely when I asked what normal human body temperature was in degrees Celcius. Anyway, I assumed this was similar to the sign in our dorm lobby that says we must show ID every time we enter but IDs are never checked. I think I was wrong.

The police have closed off our campus to all people other than students, faculty, and staff. Students must show a student ID card, and faculty have been issued documents (compete with the university's red stamp) allowing them to enter the campus. Similar to our staying in a hotel before moving into Dorm No. 6, this policy doesn't seem to really prevent the H1N1 virus from spreading.

China received quite a bit of criticism for it's failure to properly deal with the SARS virus in 2003 (I believe it was 2003; SARS on wikipedia is blocked), so it seems like they aren't messing around this time. The difference is that SARS is actually a serious disease. The H1N1 virus is the flu. The flu as in "I didn't come to work yesterday because I had the flu," or "summer is over, it's almost flu season." HIT is considering canceling students' fall break, prohibiting them from going home to celebrate the 60th aniversary of the PRC's founding. I'm not sure whether or not that would affect our break, as it does not start until October 17th, but I can say that if the Chinese government's overreaction to a disease that amounts to little more than a cold stops me from visiting Dalian or another Chinese city (still in the planning stages), we will miss out on a big part of this study abroad experience.

Personally I'm not at all worried about the flu, and no one reading this should be. That's not why I'm writing it; I just think that the Chinese reaction to the situation helps fill out an image of China, as compete an image as can be created without sitting on a plane for 13 hours.