Greetings, Earthlings, and welcome to China
BEIJING — It’s become on-board theater for those arriving in China: A team of health workers, dressed head-to-toe in white space suits, boards each international flight to scan every passenger for fever and other flu symptoms before they are allowed to set foot in country.
The team moves from seat to seat, checking each traveler, pausing to confer over any abnormality. Stories abound from tourists and business travelers, relishing in the oddity that is China’s heavy-handed reaction to the swine flu, photographing alien temperature checkers, regaling friends back home with the strange tale.
China’s citizenry weathered the SARS cover-up and crisis, has been somewhat blase about bird flu and dismissed several smaller disease outbreaks in between. Even during the SARS crisis, temperature checks were conducted in the airport, not on the plane. But when it comes to the H1N1 virus, born not in Asia but North America, China’s not taking chances.
“There is indeed a certain amount of patriotism and nationalism in the fight against H1N1,” said Yanzhong Huang, a global health studies professor at Seton Hall University who is working on a book about China’s health care system.
Huang has criticized the country’s overeager swine flu response, saying the billions of dollars spent on on-board temperature checks and measures to keep the flu out of China would be better spent elsewhere. The H1N1 virus has proved less lethal than even the common flu, he noted, and China is not following the international policy of mitigation rather than containment.
“They may have delayed the spread of the virus in China,” Huang said. “To me that doesn’t make much of a difference. If it’s going to hit China, it’s going to hit like gangbusters no matter what.”
As the rest of the world bores of swine flu fear, China’s hyper reaction continues.
Take businessman Xu Dong, 28, who returned to Beijing last month from England, where he worked as a marketing manager for four years. Though Xu was not particularly worried about the virus, he locked himself away from human interaction for a week after landing in China. The reason for his self-imposed quarantine? He had been living in a foreign country, hence his friends and family worried he brought back the swine flu.
“I was afraid of being blamed and cursed by others,” Xu said. “I didn’t want to get a bad reputation.”
There is widespread perception in China, particularly among those tuned to the Internet, that contact with foreigners is dangerous in these times. It’s an attitude not discouraged by the government and inflamed by breathless, often panicky news reports. It plays well in a country that still requires foreign residents be tested for HIV and syphilis before they can get work permits.
“In the beginning, I didn’t pay much attention,” said Li Juanjuan, 32, who works with foreigners at a publishing house. “After the news became more serious and more people became infected, I started to look at (foreigners) I was talking to see if they had any symptoms of a cold, like a runny nose.”
One would think China’s swine flu problem is far worse than reality. There have been nine confirmed cases of the H1N1 flu here, six of them transmitted domestically. Yet swine flu, which has infected 25,000 and killed 139 worldwide, remains a threat to China from foreigners.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin got caught in the Chinese swine flu dragnet this week, when a passenger on his flight to Shanghai was found with flu symptoms. Nagin, his wife and a staffer were among a planeload quarantined. Early quarantines, particularly of Mexican passengers, drew harsh criticism. Nagin is not arguing.
“The mayor is being treated with utmost courtesy by Chinese officials,” his office said in an e-mailed statement. “Mayor Nagin is feeling well and continues to be in communication with his staff.”
So with case numbers low and complaints about forced quarantine fading, what’s the harm in China taking such a firm stance on the swine flu? Huang, for one, points out that lack of exposure to this relatively mild form of the virus could make the country more vulnerable to outbreaks and mutations.
Also, he said, “You basically create a mass fear among the public.”
The proper tactic would be to tell the truth. “Tell the people what exactly the virus is,” said Huang. “What the government has told people (so far) is very paradoxical.”
Read more on reactions to swine flu:
Taiwan: Worried about swine flu? Just burn a boat.
Read more on China:
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