Passengers Cheat Flu Scan With Fever Reducers 299
Nguyen Van Chau, head of Ho Chi Minh City's Health Department, has revealed that many sick passengers who flew to Ho Chi Minh City used fever reducers to fool temperature scanners at the airport. The government has confirmed 26 people infected with H1N1 flu, 23 of whom came by air after traveling in the United States or Australia. State media reports that the discovery of these scanner cheaters led to the detection of several infected cases later.
Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
How can you call a desired outcome of taking asprin (reducing a fever) with cheating?
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
How about a more common scenario. One of your co-workers comes in coughing, sneezing, and lathers their arm in snot before leaning over your desk to see what you're looking at. Do you consider that acceptable behavior, or are you going to go to your boss to force them into taking a sick day and going home?
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
How are you going to develop any antibodies if you never are exposed to this stuff?
We are breeding entire generations that can be knocked on their collective ass by the mildest of flu strains simply because they have been raised in a risk averse world.
Are we any safer?
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with this wholeheartedly. Our first daughter we went out of our way to make sure she had social interaction and played in dirt, etc. Then my second daughter was born and we found out she had Kostman's Syndrome (Rare disorder where you can't make the white blood cells that fight off bacteria). We went from an attitude of letting our daughter play with anything she wanted and not caring to being one of those families that has hand sanitizer outside the door so visitors washed their hands before entering the house.
I like to say that we reinstalled her immune system (Bone Marrow Transplant) and she is one of the few who has no side effects at all after a transplant, so we're back to letting them (both) play in as much dirt and sharing of waterbottles, etc.
People work out to keep in shape, why not give your immune system a workout too?
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Playing with dirt is a part of being a kid. Loosen up. Seriously, it's not all that different than tending a garden. The fact that you consider it such a dangerous thing shows you have lost your sense of perspective. Everything you do has a certain risk associated with it. I'm inside a building right now. There is a possibility there will be a power surge which will cause a fire. Does that mean I shouldn't be in the damn build? Hell, I could get hit with a meteor driving home tonight. Does that mea
Re:Wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not everything out there makes you stronger if it doesn't manage to kill you. Influenza is something that fits in that category. Not only that, but due to the way it mutates, any immunity you gain from exposure to this year's strain is mostly useless against next year's strain.
Additionally, I'm not interested in becoming stronger by rolling the dice with a disease that has a chance of killing me even if I'm receiving intense medical assistance. Vaccines are one thing; full fledged infections are a whole different set of things.
That doesn't mean we need to be going out and covering our homes with plastic wrap and duct tape, but it does mean that I have absolutely no respect for people who have the flu and willingly and knowingly go out among others while in an infectious state.
This is ironic, because I'm normally the one troting out the story about how the polio epidemic began when people starting living in sanitary conditions and were thus not being exposed to the disease until after they lost the immunity provided to them by their mothers. But today, the flu is one of those diseases where exposure nothing but make you sick.
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Any illness will cause fatalities. Swine flu does kill people. Exposing all of us might "build character" and it might make us resistant to the next strain (but probably not). And it will kill people.
So you can ask us to be less careful about contamination, but when your kid dies on a respirator, will it be any comfort that our immune systems are somehow stronger because of it?
Look- Nothing has changed about us or about the flu in general since the early parts of the 20th century when flu epidemics killed h
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sorry but when it comes to the golden rule, my decision is for them to GTFO till they are well. Coming in 'infectious' sick, regardless of the motivation, is irresponsible and selfish and I'm not willing to put my own wellfare on the line for your paycheck.
Being sent home means:
A. You get the rest needed to recover more quickly
B1. You aren't at work doing a halfassed job because that's all you can do with the energy you have left.
B2. I'm not forced to spend time fixing your halfassed work.
And I'm willing to bet that the amount of work I have to sholder to cover you being out sick would be far less then the amount of work I'd have to sholder to clean up your mess when half assed isn't enough to make it work. Especially since if you are coming in to work sick, you'll probablly be sick longer than if you just took a day off and got over it.
Yes, if you work in a place that does not provide paid sick days, that's unfortunate. But it's worse of a problem if you manage to infect the rest of the office, putting us all in a half dead state.
And I'm hoping, were I the one coming in sick, my coworkers would say the same.
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Its another example of the tragedy of the commons, though. Its far better for society if the sick individual stays home... but its slightly better for the sick individual if they go to work. As long as that incentive is there, we're shooting ourselves in our (collective) foot. But, hey, just another example of the difference between standard self-interest and enlightened (long-term herd-considering) self interest...
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Yes, the excuse of "well my living conditions are so poor that I must fuck everyone else over to live" is a great one. Sadly, it's not a valid excuse you are still fucking over the rest of us.
So forgive me if I'm not particularly interested in how you portray your own selfishiness as more nobel than mine.
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If I'm sick I do my best to reduce my symptoms and keep myself away from direct contact with clients, so that I'm NOT going into someone's home (I am a social worker) coughing and sneezing all over myself or their kids. But I don't get free vacation days with which to recover, so forgive me if I find your
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waitwait wait....
are we talking about a minor cough or about a diesease KILLING ten thousands of people every year? (yep. It's called 'common flu')
either you're mixing up two things or you should let you're family know that you're risking your and others lives.
otoh, you just might want to get a decent health care system.
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Ditto.
I was once (a long time ago) working in a warehouse for the largest big-box store in the world. I got sick. Really sick. I wasn't paid well, and had no insurance. I couldn't opt for the company funded insurance because my pay was so low that it barely covered rent in my crappy apartment, food, and gas to get to/from work.
I had a 105 fever. I was barely coherent most of the time, and hallucinating at other times. In my periods of lucidity, I recorded m
Re:Wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
sounds like 3rd world sweat shop to me.
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Oh hell! Just quarantine everybody...just to be safe.
Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
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Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd love to see someone like you pursue that. "I'm suing you because you came into work sick and got me sick." ha!
You know, many carriers aren't even aware that the are.
Say an employee takes a cab from the airport. He tosses his sport coat on the seat because it's a warm day (but a company requirement to wear one to meetings). When he gets to the office, he puts on the coat, dusts it off (like any self respecting business man would), buttons it, and rubs out the new wrinkles. His old secretary gives him a hug on the way in. He does the whole round of shaking hands with the rest of the members of the meeting.
When his part of the presentation comes up, he opens his briefcase and takes out a stack of pre-printed documents to hand around. The meeting comes to an end, and he does another round of handshakes, and calls a cab to get a ride back to the airport.
He gets home, hugs and kisses his wife and kids, and proceeds to toss his briefcase in his office, and hangs his sport jacket in the closet.
Little did he know, the person in the cab was being taken to the hospital because they were really sick. They were coughing and sneezing the whole time, and running a high fever. Every inch of the back of the cab was contaminated. His hands, his jacket, the outside of his briefcase, all of which contacted the contaminated seat and door handle.
Now he's potentially contaminated every person he made contact with, as well as the meeting room, and finally the mens room. Sure, he washed his hands after he did his business, but that didn't stop him from contaminating the door handles and the sink he used.
3 days later, he's sick. 4 days later, his wife, kids, and everyone he met at the meeting come down with the same cold.
Who are you going to sue?
Now, a bit more on your topic, a coworker comes in. He has sniffles. Oh my. Allergies, or a cold? He isn't feeling too bad (yet). So some litigious bastard in the next cube catches his cold too. Turns out it wasn't allergies, nor the common cold, but swine flu. You're going to rape him and the company for everything they're worth, just because.
Sorry, the potential of infection is a fact of life. I've traveled a lot, and it's very very likely I've come in contact with things that have made me sick. I joke about "airplane sick", because it's almost guaranteed a few days after I fly, I'll be sick from something. The more I've flown, the less frequently I've gotten sick, probably because I've built up an immunity to a whole variety of illnesses. While I was flying a lot, and had the luxury, I worked from home until I was better. Sometimes I'd come into work the next day, and 3 to 4 days later, other people in the office started getting sick. That's me showered, wearing fresh clean clothes (no contamination on my person), but I may be bringing my laptop in with me, and it's bag. I have yet to see someone wash their laptop and bag. I never knowingly did it. It may have been a coincidence. Who knows. Maybe I touched a bathroom door in the airport that the previously mentioned business man did, and it carried through on my laptop bag. Maybe we just took the same cab, or used the same self-service check-in kiosk.
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That said, it's less clear whether these people even knew that they had H1N1 - if not, it's hardly reasonable to demonize them as "cheaters".
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
H1N1 is a bit miffed about it.
Also the statements by the government quoted in TFA makes it sound a little like the passengers did it intentionally because they knew they were sick and would be detained for 7 days.
Sounds to me more like justification for making examples out of people who were feeling unwell. Punishing "cheaters" to send a message goes over much better than punishing "people who took asprin because they didn't feel well, not realizing they had swine flu"
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
The culmination of my trip was a wedding in Northern Ireland. During the wedding, there was a Caylie (Spelling?) band and the reception hall was soon filled with loads of couples spinning and dancing away merrily. Now, as I was wearing a morning suit at the time, I got bloody hot bloody quickly. Ducking outside (Cold Irish night time) cooled me off quick smart. After a few moments, I went back inside. Rinse and repeat a couple of times. Result? Runny nose and cough in the morning, and a tickle in my throat since then.
While I haven't bothered to take anything for it (I have just had a cough for about a week now, nothing else), the article seems to point that if I took some aspirin for what I thought was a cold, and somehow managed to sneak a case of swine flu into the country on my returning flight, I would be some kind of cheater monster evildoer. People take remedies when they feel bad. Get used to it. I dare say that there isn't a single person that doesn't catch swine flu that doesn't start off thinking that it's a normal cold or a nasty one.
If the only measure for tracking sick people entering a country relies on them NOT taking common medication for COMMON SYMPTOMS then the bloody tracking should be the point of the article, not the few people that did what everyone does when they get sick and then "smuggled" themselves into a country.
*Cranky mode off*
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Also, are passengers on stimulants causing false positives?
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Funny)
Also, are passengers on stimulants causing false positives?
Absolutely! Though I myself must admit some guilt:
I cheated by asthma by taking Singulaire
I cheated fatigue by visiting Starbucks
I cheated hunger by grabbing a Cinnabon
And I selfishly did all this just before boarding a plane!! Nothing can stop me! Mwah ha ha haaa!
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't forget, you cheated your depression by taking wellbutrin. And you cheated the calories from the Cinnabon by taking 'themogenic fat burners'.
And then you had a seizure on the plane. :)
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Well because if you know you are suffering flu like symptoms you are supposed to tell them when you get off the plane.
By taking the "fever reducers" you are knowingly masking the symptoms.
Yea I think it is bit of a non story but I can see how it is cheating as well.
Isn't Vietnam still a China style communist country? I admit that I don't keep up with their level of freedom and human right's laws.
So . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
simple, they were tracked down as sources (Score:4, Insightful)
If they avoided detection by the offending scanner, then how were they detected to be scanner cheaters?
Well, given that they infected other people, and eventually epidemiologists tracked them down via the people they infected...
To all those defending those who traveled while sick: I'm sorry, but if there is a travel ban because of a well publicized disease that is killing people, and you don't feel well, sit your selfish ass down in bed where it belongs. My parents raised me to stay home if I was sick, because it's beyond rude to make those around you sick. The regular flu kills kids and the elderly all the time. This one is much nastier.
Let me put it this way: if people had laptops that were infected, were booted off the network because of security software, and then defeated that security software to get online (and infected machines around them, destroying some of them)...what would you say then?
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Let me put it this way: if people had laptops that were infected, were booted off the network because of security software, and then defeated that security software to get online (and infected machines around them, destroying some of them)...what would you say then?
Nothing. That's what LARTs are for.
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H1N1 Type A is "much nastier" than what?
Most of the reports that I have seen in the US are pretty clear that H1N1 Type A is no more virulent than the seasonal flu, and no more likely to cause death in the US cases. This was clear from all public reports in the US very early on. There was some difficulty in analysis because the Mexican cases appeared to indicate a much more virulent disease; I suspect that the post-game analysis will show other factors were at work including nutritional status of patient
Re:simple, they were tracked down as sources (Score:4, Interesting)
Because of the enormous attention paid to this flu variant, the level of medical care has been much higher than normal. Furthermore, the season may reduce casualties due to reduced incidence of secondary infections, etc.
Because the casualty level is in line with "normal" flue variants, but mitigating factors mentioned above are present, it's very likely that this strain *is* deadlier than the typical strains.
Furthermore, for countries with lower standards of medical care, or other factors that increase severity (like poor nutrition and sanitary conditions, for example), this strain could have disastrous impact -- especially if it is spreading like wildfire come winter in the northern hemisphere.
In short -- yes, the media has whipped up a frenzy. But, prevention of infection is still a worthy goal, and *some* extra attention is probably a good thing.
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Wait, what about all the people in the designer baby story that said we shouldn't interfere with natural selection? Wouldn't this count as part of evolution / natural selection?
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Yes. All medicine is interfering with natural selection. But the ability to get the medicine may be due to genetic factors that are being selected against, so maybe it's natural selection after all.
But, at any rate, I suspect you have an ulterior motive, plague3106 (71849). You're just trying to drum up support for not allowing
Re:simple, they were tracked down as sources (Score:4, Insightful)
This one is much nastier.
[Citation needed]
On the other hand, it's not nastier at all than other flu cases. Just look up the number of infected vs number of dead. And don't forget, we humans never encountered this strain, and despite that the deaths are most of the time people with previous health issues (like normal flu).
You can sleep quietly today. The Aporkalypse won't happen ... for now.
Re:simple, they were tracked down as sources (Score:5, Insightful)
There are several very fundamental problems with your logic:
I've been there back in summer of 2005---sick in Italy on the last day of a two week trip---and let me tell you that it isn't fun. I started out the first leg (from Italy to Heathrow) not feeling great but not terrible. It felt like a cold. By the time I left Heathrow, I was feeling miserable. By the time I got to California, it was a good thing my parents were in town visiting and could pick me up where the bus dropped me off. I would not have been able to roll my luggage the three blocks from where the bus dropped me off back to my house. Staying behind, however, was clearly not an option. I was sick for almost two weeks after that, and would have ended up spending upwards of $4,000 to postpone my return that far, not to mention the problem of getting to medical care without anyone there to drive me, the problem of getting food, etc.
While it's a nice idea (in theory) to avoid traveling while sick, in practice, it is a rather naive notion that doesn't take into account the practicality of doing so. One cannot "stay home" if one gets sick while already away from home.
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For that matter, if someone exerts themselves on vacation (water skiing, hiking, etc) they may take aspirin for the aches and pains and assume they feel the way they do because they overdid it. They might realize they're sick only when they don't feel better in the next day or two.
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You are assuming that people are deliberately trying to avoid getting caught. People who have fevers take cold medicine to make them feel better, not to evade thermal scans. Most people don't even know that they do such things at some air
This being the topic of TFA, is a given. And by doing so they were violating Vietnamese law. Pretty cut and dry now, eh?
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While it's a nice idea (in theory) to avoid traveling while sick, in practice, it is a rather naive notion that doesn't take into account the practicality of doing so. One cannot "stay home" if one gets sick while already away from home.
No, but you can and must stay at a hospital. It is quite simple. You are sick, the symptons looks like a contagious disease that is spreading. A disease that in some cases can kill. Even not buying on the panic, it is worth treating. Did I mention it is contagious??
Looks it is like when you probably have a DST. So you look down, your penis is looking funny, and you can't be arsed to look for a doctor, instead you decide to put a cream on it that will hide the symptoms from the girl you are banging but can p
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You're assuming these people *knew* they were sick, and then deliberately took measures to avoid detection. Maybe they just took some tylenol because they had a headache, or a general malaise, without being aware that they had the flu. And honestly, maybe a few particularly altruistic people would take steps to get a diagnosis in a foreign country that they don't trust, on the chance that they'd have to spend thousands of dollars to extend their trips, rebook their flights, and possibly lose their jobs...
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How many of them do you suppose actually believed they had the dreaded H1N1 vs. those who believed were avoiding 7 days of needless confinement (under god knows what conditions) when they had "a cold". If you want people to comply with confinement, it needs to be under excellent conditions and you need to be credible enough that people will believe the reports on the conditions.
Doubly so considering that according to Alpha [wolframalpha.com], we're at 36,000 cases worldwide serious enough to have been diagnosed and reported w
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If I stayed home in bed every time I felt ill, I would have bedsores and no job and no money.
Re:simple, they were tracked down as sources (Score:5, Insightful)
You could stay home when other people are sick. Not sure where in the constitution it says healthy people have right to travel when sick people don't.
No one mentioned the word "rights" here, nor is it even a question. Nor is the U.S. Constitution relevant in even the slightest of ways. I really doubt that the Vietnamese, must less most of the world really care one bit about our constitution, nor should they. Countries have the right to restrict foreign travelers, if you break their entry laws, your breaking laws and are free to accept the consequences. This too is fine. If you don't like their laws, no one is forcing you to go there.
Most Government's, including the U.S. have the right to quarantine people for the good of the public health. This is also fine. If you, exercising your rights to be an inconsiderate asshat, endanger hundreds of people, then your rights to travel can, and should, be temporarily suspended. This makes perfect sense.
Can we please stop with this "the Constitution says I have the right to do whatever the hell I please" meme. It doesn't, and it goes against the legal and philosophical trends that lead to the foundation of the US. Your rights stop the second they infringe on someone else's. You don't have the right to be a dick.
Also can we stop with this "The U.S Constitution is somehow universally relevant to other sovereign nations" bull. No one cares. Hell, we decided the Constitution isn't even valid to large swaths of people in the US, or held against their will on US soil. Why should any country treat us differently?
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You could stay home when other people are sick. Not sure where in the constitution it says healthy people have right to travel when sick people don't.
With rights or freedoms come responsibilities. Is it asking so much for somebody to not act like an asshole and potentially infect an entire plane full of people if they have any level of suspicion that they're ill with something infectious?
I Wish to Purchase One of These Fine Straw Men! (Score:4, Funny)
I wish to purchase one of these fine straw men,
for placement in my cornfield.
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Because the government in Viet Nam doesn't want people to know that the scanners are a useless waste?
Fever doesn't spell influenza (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fever doesn't spell influenza (Score:5, Insightful)
Fever can be caused by lots of things. H1N1 isn't the only possible fever-inducing pathogen, and you can even have fever without having an infection. Preventing people with fever from travelling seems kind of an overkill.
What you said and the mentality that would refer to this as "cheating" rather than "we need to implement a better way to screen for this, preferably one that fully informs the airline passengers of our intentions" reminded me of a joke. TSA = Thugs Standing Around.
Re:Fever doesn't spell influenza (Score:5, Insightful)
While you are correct you missed the biggest point. You can carry H1N1 or any virus for days without showing any symptom including fever.
That makes these scanners completely worthless. The goal of these must be to program people to get used to ridiculous measures for their "security."
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Not necessarily, the goal could also be to have something "concrete" to point to when the mobs fear of H1N1 demands that the government do SOMETHING to protect them.
"See? We tried to screen at the airport to keep it from coming in, but people cheated to get around our screening. THOSE people are who you should be mad at, not US."
Re:Fever doesn't spell influenza (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, you know, to prevent a pandemic flu from becoming established inside your borders, thus saving potenitally thousands of lives and countless hours of productivity.
Seriously. The fact that people can be incubating the virus while not presenting symptoms does not mean that identifying those who ARE symptomatic is useless. Identifying people who potentially have the disease, and quarantining them, is one of the most important and effective ways to prevent the spread of communicable disease.
Especially since a vaccine is on the way, the goal right now for any country is to prevent penetration of H1N1 Mexican flu through their borders until the vaccine is widely available.
You may think it's security theater... but then again, we can all be glad you're not the one making the decisions relating to national health concerns on this.
And, FWIW, regarding carrying a virus asymptomatically... almost all viral diseases have predictable incubation times. This is what makes quarantine effective. For example, if you travel to China right now, and someone on your plane has flu-like symptoms, you get quarantined for seven days (several days longer than the incubation time of H1N Mexican flu). So by the end of quarantine, you're either symptomatic, or cleared as not infected.
I'm rambling a bit here, but... the threat of pandemic is real, and fever scanners are a useful tool in helping prevent the spread of the disease. Sure, they're not 100% effective... but for an exponential expansion of victims, a small decrease in vector individuals can drastically reduce the number of people affected before a vaccine is readily available.
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WTF are you talking about. If the system isn't perfect than it is completely useless.
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The only way to truly stop a pandemic is to stop all travel into your borders unless you have a 100% fullproof system.
It would be a miracle if this sytem caught 1%.
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In the long run, yes it would be necessary to completely close the borders to prevent your population from being exposed.
But we're not dealing with the long run. We're just dealing with the period of time until the vaccine is widely available (and, of course, proof of vaccination will be required for entry).
Why? If your tolerance of false-positive is high, detection systems like this could be considerably mor
Re:Fever doesn't spell influenza (Score:4, Interesting)
Correct. There is nothing mystical about H1N1. It's a strain of the extremely common influenza A virus. You know influenza A well, you've probably had at least several times in your life. It's the flu. This is just a new strain. It's not any worse (or better) than any other strain of influenza A. All this hand-waving about H1N1 is stupid and pointless. Anybody with half a brain could tell you that, yes, you can carry the flu for several days without showing any symptoms whatsoever.
There were 45,000 cases of the of the swine flu in the U.S. and I think like 25 people died. That's a fatality rate of what? A half of a tenth of a percent? About the same fatality rate for any other strain of influenza A.
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All this hand-waving about H1N1 is stupid and pointless.
This is not the flu we'relooking for....Move along.
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My mother is cold. Literally cold.
When she has a fever she peaks at 98F
I doubt I'd be able to fool one of these sensors. My fevers usually hit 103-104F. Apparently I once hit 105F, and was totally tripping out, muttering stuff while I slept. Luckily someone cooled me down. ;)
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I've got mixed feelings about this. If someone sitting next to me on a plane has a fever, I want to know about it! Either way I want to know about it. On the other hand, the very fact that I've left my home exposes me to the risk of germs.
If you are sick, do not travel. If for some reason you must, wear a mask and ask the agent to give you a seat in the back.
Seems unlikely (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Seems unlikely (Score:5, Interesting)
Asian countries (like South Korea and China) are primed to respond quickly and strongly to pandemic threats, due to their recent experience with the avian flu.
Another coworker of mine was supposed to fly to China to visit family this summer... her friends and family have told her that they won't see her if she goes, since there are confirmed cases of H1N1 Mexican flu in our area. So she's putting off the trip until the vaccine is available.
Re:Seems unlikely (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of countries require incoming travelers to answer some questions about their health, to help prevent the spread of disease. Not sure if the country in question is currently doing this, but I suspect they are.
So you won't be allowed to board the plane unless you answer "no" when asked if you've had any symptoms of illness.
So the fact that they took a fever-reducer means they knew they were ill; the fact that they answered no to the question means they knew they weren't supposed to travel while ill; so the the conclusion is that they took the antipyretic partly to avoid detection.
Assuming, of course, that the country in question requires incoming travelers to answer the questions about illness.
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So the fact that they took a fever-reducer means they knew they were ill; the fact that they answered no to the question means they knew they weren't supposed to travel while ill; so the the conclusion is that they took the antipyretic partly to avoid detection.
On Sunday afternoon, I swept off my roof and mowed the lawn. I got a bit overheated in the process and so needed to rest inside. A little later, I felt a bit achy so I took ibuprofen (a fever reducer). So, I felt a bit dizzy, ached all over, was tired, and took a fever reducer. Had anyone asked me if I was ill, I would have said no. It would be possible that I had swine flu and just didn't know it due to having another reasonable explanation for my symptoms. For vacationers, instead of yard work, substitute
This was said before (Score:4, Informative)
Intent? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Never mind the fact that if you have a Cold or Flu the doctor will say stop wasting my time and infecting everyone else in the waiting room and take some over the counter pain killers, for instance Ibuprofen or Paracetemol.
Typical. (Score:5, Funny)
Those bastards, trying to keep their proteins from denaturing! Hang them, hang them high!
And now... (Score:4, Insightful)
...can someone lend me that cool (but useless) thermal scanner so I can watch that hot girl that lives next door? That would be definitely useful.
Re:And now... (Score:5, Funny)
...can someone lend me that cool (but useless) thermal scanner so I can watch that hot girl that lives next door? That would be definitely useful.
Why? So you can look at her delicious kind-of-reddish-coloured breast outlines and those sexy blueish-green thighs?
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Why? So you can look at her delicious kind-of-reddish-coloured breast outlines and those sexy blueish-green thighs?
Hey, Kirk seemed to like the green color in Star Trek...
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So you can look at her delicious kind-of-reddish-coloured breast outlines and those sexy blueish-green thighs?
It's a shame I'm daltonic :-(
I bet running for the plane will get you flagged. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a misuse of technology and is very much security theatre. You're more likely to prevent the spread of flu by praying to the spaghetti monster. The thing is that people are panicked over this as it has been overhyped by the media. They're willing to put up with any inconvenience as long as they can trade it for a warm (but not too warm or you'll get scanned) safe feeling.
Re:I bet running for the plane will get you flagge (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I bet running for the plane will get you flagge (Score:3, Informative)
While I certainly believe tat the media has over-hyped H1N1, you have to also remember where the Scientific community's concern is.
The way it went with "the flu" that we keep hearing about in the '20s is that.
1) There was suddenly a spring flu that was both out of season and relatively mild (what we have now, and H1N1 appears to also be related to that earlier strain)
2) By the time of the Fall and the "usual" flu season, the strain from early spring had mutated dramatically making it extremely deadly (as th
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Before this there was SARS, hoof-and-mouth, mad cow, West Nile virus, and probably others I am forgetting that were supposed to be huge deadly threats. The problem is that after those, that community or at least what the media makes of them starts to look like the boy who cried "wolf" too many times. If t
wow (Score:5, Insightful)
What were they thinking!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
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LOL, did you notice that one of the tags was "assholes", that seriously made my day :)
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If they took asprin to consciously break another countries laws; I agree. Get'em.
Perfect way of detecting people with swine flu (Score:2)
Just take them to an interrogatory room!
- So, do you sneeze constantly?
- Er... no.
- I saw you sneeze before.
- I didn't.
- But supose you did. Why would you lie about sneezing?
- Hm, maybe because I wouldn't want you to know that I have the swine flu and lock me up in here.
- So, when did you get the flu then?
- I didn't get the flu.
- Oh, i see. We've got a smart-ass here!
Or, another way of seeing it:
1 - Come to the conclusion that a good swine flu detector would be useful.
2 - ???
3 - Build thousand
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Or, another way of seeing it:
1 - Come to the conclusion that a good swine flu detector would be useful.
2 - ???
3 - Build thousands of swine flu detectors and sell them.
4 - Profit!
#2 is easy. Convince someone with a lot of money and a lot of fear that a good swine flu detector would be useful.
Pointless (Score:4, Insightful)
So this vaunted "flu-scanner" can be fooled simply by taking Tylenol? Are you serious? Shouldn't it be assumed that anyone who is running a fever will most likely be taking fever-reducing medications?
Tell me again what the point of this scanner is?
Re:Pointless (Score:5, Funny)
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Those people .. (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing but face-saving (Score:5, Insightful)
Are the procedures any good? (Score:2)
I wonder if these procedures aren't really helping spread the disease faster.
In Argentina, at EZE, my whole flight was squeezed into a very small (and hot!) space and then they let us out one by one as we passed in front of the scanner and were checked by grumpy old doctors.
alarmist article brought you by temp scan corps (Score:2)
I've done it (Score:3, Interesting)
Not for H1N1 but just for a milder flu, I took acetaminophen in mainland China(Guangdong) to get pass the checkpoint at the Hong Kong border. I had a flight leaving out of Hong Kong soon and wanted to get the hell out of China (I don't like it there).
The scanned me with a simple temp probe, check my passport and let me pass. Being held for observation at some random security check point in a strange country(to me) would have really sucked, especially given that I was not feeling well at all.
I likely spread my illness for 3 days before I even felt sick. So those checkpoints are not effective enough to matter, in my opinion.
Re:Perfectly normal (Score:4, Insightful)
This comment is just continuing the bullshit that is in the article...
People didn't take fever reducers to fool the scanner. They took an aspirin 'cause they felt like crap.
Anonymous thought criminal (Score:2)
Uh-oh. Unauthorized thoughts detected.
Re:So doing something to my own body is CHEATING? (Score:4, Funny)
So doing something to my own body is CHEATING?
That's what I told her :-(
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Probably the biggest problem wasnt that people took aspirines because they knew they were sick (in a situation where a pandemic is spreading, and you could be carrier, some people could put the criminal negligence label), but what about people that usually takes aspirines because headache or other minor things?
Re:So doing something to my own body is CHEATING? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why, at least since the War on (some) Drugs. You don't own your body if the government can tell you what you may or may not put into it. Likewise, you don't own your consciousness if the government can tell you that there are authorized and unauthorized ways of altering it. In both cases, you are more like a tenant of your body and of your mind, not an owner. That's one of the major reasons why you don't use manipulative social engineering to solve perceived problems, because it sets some very nasty precedents like this. Precedents which later generations, having few or no counter-examples, grow up to believe are normal and acceptable.
If the War on Drugs actually did anything to reduce the street availability of the substances it seeks to control (do the research; it hasn't), I might feel differently about it, though I doubt it because my opposition to it is rooted in principle. As it has failed to achieve its primary stated goals, I consider it completely without merit and its ill side-effects to be unjustifiable. Anyway, to answer your question, yes we have ceded control over our bodies to the government and we did it a long time ago. We traded it for a little safety that hasn't kept us any safer but has guaranteed a steady flow of money to various criminal organizations by means of the black market. Like anyone else who trades what is priceless for something that has a price, we got screwed. Not only is some buyer's remorse in order, it's long overdue.
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Because in our culture, your security is something that is done to you, not something in which you are actively involved. Being actively involved in your own interests would be a microcosm of self-determination, self-government, personal responsibility, and individualism. You know, those things that this country used to be all about. There is currently something of a
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in our culture,
Kind of a stretch to call Ho Chi Minh City "our culture" when you're talking about the USA, no?
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in our culture,
Kind of a stretch to call Ho Chi Minh City "our culture" when you're talking about the USA, no?
I didn't do a very good job of explaining how the silliness and security theater that is mostly being pioneered in the USA is now spreading even to distant nations with rather different beliefs such as Vietnam. As I did a poor job of that, I am glad you called me on it. I see all of that as a general process of decline that has no borders, though there are reasons why it happens in some places first and takes time to spread to others. To put that another way, while I can't prove it, I strongly suspect th
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To put that another way, you know what would really stop terrorists from hijacking an airplane? Hundreds of well-armed passengers. And no, a bullet hole will not decompress an aircraft.
Yeah I would feel much safer with that drunk jerk behind me packing heat. And when you get delayed on the tarmac for 6 hours I am sure he won't take out his frustration on the staff. It isn't like they already have to land planes to drag off people who freak out...
Lets look at some gun stats - http://www.metro.us/us/article/2009/06/16/03/5431-82/index.xml [metro.us] Looks like big pro-gun southern states see 300-500% more gun related deaths than states with strong gun control like Massachusetts. Problem with givin