Quarantine

As far as I know, no one has exceeded the magic threshold yet. This seems impossible, given that there are 80 people here. The temperatures are self-reported to some degree, except for the inept folks like me who can't read their own thermometers. But even so, regardless of whether everyone remains permanently fever-free, we are effectively under quarantine. So say the program leaders, who left us a cautious note under our doors warning us not to stray too far from campus.

It's hard not to go out and feel like a disease carrier. When I started coughing while playing chinese chess outdoors, it was hard not to notice the locals around me looking at me warily. Walking into a restaurant it's hard not to feel the heads turn, whether they actually are or not. It enhances yet again the feeling of being a little bit like a lab rat - subject to tests, like the remarkably difficult one this morning to place us into the correct level of Chinese, with the goal of seeing whether our tiny brains can absorb the requisite amount of Chinese.

As far as the quarantine goes, it's obviously hard not to feel that this is an exaggerated response to a disease that has killed under 200 people in the entire world - no doubt less than a day's worth of lung cancer cases for Beijingren. The most natural reaction is to feel that this is a irrational response on the part of the Chinese government, with the inherent notion of Western medical superiority. And while I think that the swine flu has been exaggerated (in the states as well as here) and there is no question that Chinese medicine lacks the sophistication of its western counterpart, I think that reducing the quarantine to an illogical measure misses the picture. You have to realize that China is still recovering from its exposure to avian flu, which actually was a major problem and changed the way that the country reacts to viral disease. From what I understand, people didn't use to wear the facemasks that sick people often adopt until the outbreak of avian flu - and yet now they're all over the place, in hong kong especially where the swine flu was pretty bad, but also as a quotidian event here. And now consider the American response to illness - would anyone ever consider wearing one of those clinical looking facemasks to work, rather than sniffling and spreading their germs all over the place? It would be silly, right? Well, I don't think it's a bad idea.

I guess all I'm denouncing is the use of habit alone in reacting to illness, or any challenge really. Read Collapse for a better explanation of what I'm talking about. But though the quarantine may be a little bit absurd, it at least shows some signs of reactivity to injury. Now, for insanity, talk about how no one here wears helmets...