South Korea - Swine Flu will close all schools and pretty much shut the country down for 10 days--and give foreign teachers another 10 day quarantine

I've already written some posts about how I think Swine Flu is going to shut all of South Korea's schools down this September/October for 10 days--and since schools and hogwans also function as a kind of national babysitting service closures will amount to shutting down the whole country because many parents will not be able to work as they'll be home taking care of their kids . . .

H1N1/Swine Flu in Korea -- I predict all schools will be closed in Korea for 10 days this fall/winter--probably Sept/Oct,

H1N1 will become an epidemic in Korea that will see a revolution in hygiene awareness, and Koreans staying home when they're sick,

"You should go to the hospital" -- Korean cultural norm of going to hospital for many things may backfire on it for H1N1

The formula for this disaster basically boils down to these things.

1) As a general rule in Korea when someone sneezes and/or coughs they don't cover their nose and mouth.
2) Hand washing with hot water, soap, and for an appropriate length of time is also not common.
3) School bathrooms, and public washrooms in Korea, all too often do not have soap.
4) Students are not encouraged consistently to cover their noses and mouths when they sneeze and cough.
5) There is a general cultural attitude that believes you MUST go to school and/or work regardless of how sick you may be. This guarantees prolonging illnesses and infecting others in the schools and workplaces of Korea.
6) The general public is not educated about H1N1's basic facts: the signs and symptoms, how it is transmitted, and what they should do if they believe they have H1N1.
7) In Korean schools it is the students that clean the schools. The notion that students have the proper training on how to sanitize school classrooms, bathrooms, and the entire building properly is utter nonsense. Add to the mix that students do not generally use cleaning chemicals (and they shouldn't be using them, they're dangerous to use too) when they clean the schools each day and you get the formula for disaster.

Today in the Korea Times there was this article, Temperature Gap Setting Off Flu Fears. Here's an excerpt that bears some attention.

"We will carefully consider the speed of the infection, the affected population and region and other elements before deciding to raise the alert level for the virus," Health Minister Jeon Jae-hee said Tuesday (my italics).

And, "The government decided to issue an order to close all schools in case the alert level is raised" (my italics, bold, and color).

Now here's the thing . . . I've already been put through two pseudo-quarantines since I came back to Korea at the end of August.

The first quarantine, and I use this word VERY loosely because it was not done properly, was during my orientation for a week.

The second quarantine, and again I use this word EXTREMELY loosely, is going on this week. I'm not allowed to have contact with students at my school. The bizarre aspect of this situation is that I still have to go IN to my school where I have contact with the Korean teachers . . . oh yeah, and students coming in and out of the teachers office.

Now it seems like there will be a THIRD quarantine coming up in the next few weeks to months when the Swine Flu hits Korea in massive numbers. I'm pretty sure I'm going to get the order from the powers that be that I should stay home in my apartment because I'm seen as a 'carrier' of the virus regardless of whether or not I'm sick.

I pretty much expect there will be mass infections among the student populations at each school--and that that will guarantee I get sick too because I can't escape the virus clouds that each sick student will expel into the air as they sneeze and cough without covering their noses and mouths . . . and then add to the mix that they will be touching surfaces in the schools that are high traffic areas that I will also be having contact with.

I made a lesson about hygiene and covering your nose and mouth for my students back in 2006. There is a very useful video clip from Outbreak, look at the 4:20 time into the video, where you see the virus cloud that comes out of a person's mouth and the camera follows the virus spores flying through the air and into the noses and mouths of other people in the movie theater . . .

Let me preface this video clip by saying I KNOW H1N1 is not the same as Ebola, or other deadly diseases, but I DO think that there is a fear factor behind how Korea is dealing with this 'exotic and foreign' disease that makes using this clip not all that much of a stretch . . .

The typical reaction I, and I think most foreign teachers, usually get when I chastise the students for not covering their noses and mouths when sneezing/coughing is laughter, sometimes mocking, and being told that the students are all friends and that they share EVERYTHING. Well, I generally prefer NOT to share viruses/diseases with people and I hope that H1N1 causes a cultural revolution in the schools and public spaces of Korea.

Let's just hope that the general lack of knowledge and experience dealing with viruses/diseases doesn't lead to these kind of extreme measures . . .

We may not see the military mobilized to deal with H1N1 but I suspect that we may see some bizarre ideas about how to deal with the virus in the coming weeks . . .

Lastly, "Some 930 students have contracted the disease at 400 schools, with 19 being closed" (Korea Times) I don't how many schools there are in Korea, nor how many hogwans, but I imagine if this number gets much higher the alert level will be raised and all the schools will be closed . . .

J
Update: I was re-reading the article and found this last part rather amusing, "To avoid virus contraction, experts stressed the importance of a healthy lifestyle, including regular exercise, fixed sleeping hours and a balanced diet to maintain the vitality of the immune system."

Senior year Korean high school students generally get 4-6 hours of sleep a night, and there is a general culture of sleep deprivation in Korea . . . studying and working hard is a matter of national pride, and sleep just doesn't factor into the picture.

Why the 'experts' aren't talking about covering your nose and mouth when you sneeze/cough, washing your hands regularly, and staying home when you're sick pretty much sums up my belief that the country will have to shut the schools down.