Three Japanese test positive for H1N1 flu

flu flu flu!

Everybody panic! The swine flu has come to Japan:

The three — a high school teacher in his 40s and two teenage students from Osaka — had been staying in Oakville, Canada, on a school trip from April 24 and arrived at Narita airport from Detroit at around 4:30 p.m. Friday on a Northwest Airlines flight.

During a quarantine inspection onboard the airplane, the three, who have developed symptoms such as fever and coughing, tested positive for influenza A and were taken to Japanese Red Cross Narita Hospital in Narita, Chiba Prefecture, where they have been isolated.

Further examinations by the National Institute of Infectious Diseases confirmed their infection with the new flu.

More flu news: Japanese health authorities are said to be calling every person who recently returned from North America to make sure nobody has developed flu-like symptoms.

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15 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - May 9, 2009 at 9:57 am

Categories: General Japan Tags:

http://www.feitclub.com feitclub

Yes, a friend of mine arrived from the US last Friday and they called him at our place a few days later to confirm that he hadn’t gotten sick. Not sure what they would have done had he become sick (too late to quarantine, certainly) but they are definitely following up on their flimsy health inspections.
Bad Wolf

Yipee! The flu is finally here! It’s Mass Gomi hysterical frenzy time. All on-the-street reporters don your masks.
Run in circles, scream and shout.
http://whatjapanthinks.com Ken Y-N

KILL THEM WITH FIRE!!1!1

Glad, I suppose, that it is Japanese nationals who brought it in, not foreigners.

On Friday we got new office rules – all overseas trips to anywhere cancelled and if you or your family have been/go abroad, on return you must spend 10 days at home monitoring your own health. Not sure if the company expects the days to come off your own holiday allowance, but a colleage was away in Hong Kong over GW so it’ll be interesting to see if he comes to the office or not.
Level3

Yup, this policy “stay at home for 10 days unpaid, even though you’re healthy, and even if you are sick, it’s no worse than the flu you infected everyone with last year because we didn’t let you take sick days” especially for part timers who can’t afford it, is not in any employment contract, is it?

If you show up for work on time and your company doesn’t let you work, aren’t you entitled to get paid? Though I think there’s some clause about natural disasters if tey make it impossible to conduct business.

Is this going to be a permanent new policy every time the press raises an alarm about a disease (so basically, every other year, forever)?

Of course, the message is clear. From now on LIE (or at least don’t volunter the info) to your employer about any travel abroad on vacations.

http://whatjapanthinks.com Ken Y-N

Be interesting to see if our president, who regularly visits overseas factories, follows the rules.

I’ll ask about paid holidays or not on Monday, and see what the union has to say, although the guy who went to Hong Kong is our team union rep…

Speaking personally, I’d love 10 days at home paid or not as I’ve got 70 days in the bank!

George

Pardon me for asking the obvious, but is this normal could-happen-anywhere hysteria, or is this cultural, related to Japan? I had seen and heard things in the past that suggest that Japanese are borderline paranoid about illness in general (hence, the uncommon cultural acceptance of face masks in public).

I mean, I know that hysteria over swine flu has sort of swept the world (though dying down now), but reading these news stories about Japanese response makes it seem like this a really spectacular, borderline-OCD sort of response that could only happen when there was a pre-existing cultural fear.
http://www.hormel.com Vonskippy

What is the big deal? I actually had H1N1. Was miserable the first 4 days (high fever, runny nose, cough, headache, very tired), uncomfortable for the next 2 days (hacking cough) and then I was over it. One doctor visit, one prescription (cough syrup with codeine) and a few days watching bad tv and that was the end of it (neither my wife or children caught it – I probably caught it from a trip to California – lots of wheezing people on the plane). It’s JUST the flu – not AIDS or EBOLA.

Jerry

Its not just a flu, its a similar flu that caused the Spanish Flu in 1918
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H1N1

lala

They should have locked down the whole country in the first place–no one out, no one in.

Why didn’t they wear those surgical mask while travelling in Canada? Are they going to blame Canadians for not wearing those masks around them? We got scores of confirmed cases in our area, but no big deal. First couple people who were confirmed to have H1N1 appeared on TV (wearing masks, of course) telling how they were feeling.

Still, Japanese Mass Gomi is so much fun to read and watch than those American “reality shows” because it’s so “unreal”.
weirdo

My friend was on that plane, and now he’s being quarantined for 10 days.

weirdo

Update:

[01:02] Friend: duuuude mo saiaku sakki i got a call from
[01:02] Friend: the
[01:02] Friend: health office
[01:02] Friend: and they were like….
[01:02] Friend: yeah.. so the person who had the H1N1 virus was actually sitting in 40E
[01:02] Friend: and you were giri giri out of the 2meter range
[01:02] Me: ROFL
[01:02] Me: abunee
[01:02] Friend: i was 38A
[01:02] Friend: like maji me ni..2 seats over
[01:02] Friend: before itw as 4 seats over
[01:02] Me: omae shinunjanai no
[01:03] Me: rofl
[01:03] Friend: saisho wa 43A toka
[01:03] Friend: datta
[01:03] Friend: luckily the gov’t doesn’t announce the ppl who were sitting
[01:03] Friend: in those seats

lala

My sympathies to your friend, weirdo. It sounds like “solitary confinement” reading what’s like in Japanese-language newspapers. Having nothing to do but to watch Japanese TV programs all day for 10 days is, in my opinion, a cruel and unsual punishment.

weirdo

Nah, it’s pretty hilarious.

Level3

Don’t really see the point of only quanarteening a few passengers who were nearby the visibly sick (who appeared to be scattered around the pane already) Everyone breathes the same recycled air and most importantly, use the same toilets, and attempting to wash their hands with those damned micro-size sinks probably just guarantees infection. Meanwhile, quite a few were probably infected but hadn’t developed noticeable symptoms at the time.

BTW, let’s stop the Spanish flu alarmism. That was almost 100 years ago, even before the invention of antibiotics (or most of modern medicine), heck even before the ubiquity of clean water for many places, which would have prevented the majority of those deaths, which were caused by resultant pneumonia. Though not the severe bleeding from mucous membranes deaths.

But if such a strian does appear next time around, are the J authorities going to continue the silly partial quarantines of passengers?

“…It’s kind of like partial circumcision, either go all the way or fuckin’ forget it.”
-Robin Williams
Michael Jones

I was to leave on an educational exchange trip to Japan today.

My school is in Oakville, Ontario. We were going to Osaka Electro-Communication University, and were to stay in Neyagawa.

You couldn’t engineer a more obvious cancellation if you tried.

Three Japanese test positive for H1N1 flu

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