So the World Health Organization has declared H1N1 as a pandemic, which prompts questions of whether the fears over it are justified or a panicky over-reaction. I didn’t elaborate on the H1N1 precautions in Hong Kong in my earlier post, so let me say here that while they’re not exactly in a panic over it, it’s obvious enough that they’re taking it a lot more seriously than most people in Malaysia. Posters urging the public to take health precautions are everywhere and every time we used the subway, we were constantly bombarded by warnings and advice about respiratory diseases over the public announcements system.

One particular precaution that we found novel was placing hand sanitizers in many public areas. They seem to dispense some sort of alcohol-based disinfectant that you’re supposed to use regularly. Since the substance just evaporates, it won’t leave your hands slimy or wet. Many surfaces that you might expect members of the public to touch on a regular basis, such as escalator handrails, elevator buttons and even seats in public waiting areas had signs indicating that they’re disinfected on a regular schedule. Obviously all these measures take quite a bit of effort and money to implement, which means that they need to be justified on a cost-benefit basis.

Since my wife wasn’t feeling well just prior to our trip and I’ve been having a persistent cough (which turns out to be probably some sort of immune-reaction based irritation rather than a viral infection), we actually went to a doctor before our trip and asked for her advice, in particular over whether or not wearing surgical masks was advisable. My initial instinct was that they probably do little good because viruses are tiny, tiny things that aren’t going to be stopped by a piece of cloth and that the only good they would do was if those who were already infected wore them to minimize spreading the infection around.

The doctor we went to however seemed pretty convinced that wearing a surgical mask would be better than nothing even for uninfected folks and that she personally would not only wear a mask constantly while on a flight, but would also scrub down every piece of clothing worn while on the plane. Since we’d noticed that all of the medical personnel in Malaysian hospitals were wearing masks as well, we decided to go along with the advice and wear them ourselves. However, when I got back to Kota Kinabalu and searched for information on it on the Internet, I got some fairly ambiguous conclusions from Wikipedia and a great deal of derision from QT3.

The general consensus seems to be that if you really need protective equipment, you’d need nothing less than a respirator, a surgical gown, gloves and goggles that cover both your eyes and your ears. One person on QT3 insisted that the only way the virus spreads is through physical contact, either skin to skin, through expelled bodily fluids or touching infected surfaces. What surprised me most from the discussion thread on QT3 however, was how casually most Americans are treating the pandemic. One forum member revealed that he had a confirmed case in the family and while several other family members showed flu symptoms to various degrees of severity, no attempts were made to test if it was specifically H1N1.

Most Americans seem to think that it’s just another strain of flu and fears of it being something more are just being panicky. The Asians seem to be determined to stamp it out even if it’s fairly mild so far in order to prevent it from establishing a foothold in the general population. However, if the Americans aren’t cooperating, this seems like a lost cause to me. One QT3 poster claimed that the Chinese government is deiberately using this as an excuse to teach their people to upgrade their hygiene practices to global standards, which I suppose could be true.

Personally, I believe that even if H1N1 is less of a threat than it initially seemed, taking all these precautions is still a useful if expensive way of preparing the entire world for a more serious threat down the road. Think of it as intensive training, both for medical personnel, government officials and the general population on how to act and what to expect.