False Alarm?

Well, over the weekend the government hasn't (yet) shut down secondary schools...so appears that my job will continue as usual over the coming weeks.

The day after the primary schools shut down, the headline of the leading English-language newspaper blared, "Disease Experts Claim No Need to Worry!" Apparently the deaths of the past month, while sharing some flu-like symptoms, don't have enough in common to lead the experts to think that there's any reason to worry about a coming bird flu epidemic. Today, the editorial page was full of letters complaining about the shut down / lack of advance notice / etc etc etc.

The general sense now seems to be that the government is engaging in a massive CYA operation. That's CYA, Cover Your Ass. Better to shut down the primary schools for two weeks, let whatever flu-like diseases are out there to wither and die, than to risk there being something dangerous lurking in the unwashed hands of 7 year-olds.

And who can blame them? It's about five years ago that SARS crippled the city (and lots of the mainland as well), and the government got such flack from alleged (or deserved, I don't know as I wasn't here or following it closely) failings during that scary time that Better Safe Than Sorry is the motto.

I was able to scare up some renewed interest from the lil beasties in our class wikispace...if we need it full time, it's there. And heck, dear reader, go over there and make some sort of edit yourself. Or give me some advice about how to spiff it up, get the students more involved on it. Aside from the small minority of lil guys who love me / love computers, the space is not widely used anymore.

And, don't forget to wash your hands! 20 second minimum, get that soap into a lather.