Think these masks will fly?

These masks stick right to your face. Too goofy for anyone to wear? I saw a man wearing two of the gappy rectangular ones today, one over the other, so who knows.

One thing interesting about these, besides their aerodynamic look, is their angle. The ads for Unicharm masks are all about Japan. The one that say's "Japan's family mask" drives home the point by putting "Japan" in katakana - the equivalent of underline or bold or both. This one is about America. The masked model is white with blue eyes, in contrast to the masked Japanese family with the grandmother in a kimono and the daughter in a sailor school uniform. How good is the mask? So good that it's certified by NIOSH, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health - of the USA. I think it's strange that they went with the US seal of approval, even translating NIOSH into Japanese, since it's pretty rare to see Americans in face masks outside of an operating room.

Welcome. Please decontaminate yourself

Hand sanitizer and an apologetic sign asking all guests to use it in the entrance of a big Japanese company. The receptionists are all wearing masks, but the rank and file are not. Most people on the subway aren't, either. Weekend concerts and company picnics are being canceled. I don't know how useful that is as long as we all keep piling into trains and elevators all week. Probably better to catch it now while it's mild, anyway.
Incidentally, I think the IHT headline - front and center, above the fold - that we are in "full-blown crisis mode" may be jumping the gun. (The online editions don't use "full-blown" in the headline, though it is in the URL. Did cooler heads prevail along the way?) Because then what can they call it when everyone is wearing Tyvek suits to work?

Take your swine flu-y business elsewhere

This sign is on a little bluegrass bar in Harajuku.

"Please, if you have a FEVER or a COUGH do NOT come in."

This is the only one of its kind I've seen so far. (I translated the swirly red dots as all caps. I think it gives the same overwrought tone.)

Cartoon newscasters get masks, too

Props to the Japanese Ministry of Health for getting instructional cartoon and live-action flu videos up on the Ministry's own YouTube channel. (Do we have that?) Boo for lack of embedding and social networking buttons.
Probably someone more clever could stick the videos right here anyway, but all you get is a link. (Go right to 3:30 to find out what happens when someone sneezes on you. Or, maybe, don't.)

Swine flu: it's on

Confirmed swine flu cases rocketed from 3 to over 120 over the weekend.


This is the first time I've seen turkeys singled out. (Mainichi)


I think what we want to do is find that guy in the middle. (Allatanys)


To bring down a fever, cool your neck, armpits, and thighs with damp towels. (Yomiuri)



And fer chrissakes, stay away from that guy. (Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare)

When a swine was just a pig

Ah, simpler times.

Fighting swine with swine

I came home from work today with a sore throat and a low-grade fever. In place of chicken soup, we go to the Hong Kong restaurant across the street for tan tan men to squelch colds. You can get some version of this red spicy sesame noodle soup at all kinds of noodle shops and Chinese places but Kowloon is my favorite. Instead of chicken, it has a scoop of spiced ground pork on top, and instead of carrots and celery, bok choi and nira.
I don't have swine flu - or probably any kind of flu - but it struck me as funny to eat porky soup to kill a fever this week.

For all your carpentry/pandemic needs

There was a small crowd gathered around the flu prevention corner at DIY mecca Tokyu Hands in Shibuya on Friday, peppering the two patient staffers with questions. One nervous, heavily made up older woman already holding two boxes of masks was asking when the next shipment would arrive. (6:30 pm.) And the next after that? (Long inhale. Hard to say. Could be... a while.)
A few people were turning over the $30 boxed sets of full-body protection suit sets (gloves, goggles, jumpsuits, respirator liners).

I am a little bit confused about particle masks as protection against viruses. Sure, they would stop globs and splatters from going straight into the flu holes on your face, but could they really stop actual little viruses from worming in? They aren't on 3M's page of health protection goods, though they are mentioned, if fuzzily, on their PDF about what kind of gear the CDC recommends using if you have to intubate someone who's infected.
3M does list similar respirators under Pandemic Preparation - Swine Flu, explaining that they "can be used during laser surgery, electrocautery and other procedures using powered medical instruments to help reduce wearer exposure to airborne particles (plume, smoke) generated during these procedures." Uh huh. And they are "fluid resistant to help reduce potential exposure of the wearer to the spray, spatter and aerosol of blood and body fluids." On a good day, this will not apply to my morning commute.

I asked the Tokyu Hands guy how the particle masks stacked up behind the about pandemic influenza infographics were related to preventing the flu. "Well, basically," he said, "these are dust masks. If you want to really prevent the spread of disease, those medical masks would be better. " So, still, I don't know. But I do know where you can get a full body Tyvek suit, dry shampoo, and a chemical toilet so you can batten down the hatches during the coming plague.
Especially if it's a plague of wood shavings.

More fun with flu graphics

Mask and wash. (From the Yomiuri.) Gargling is the other key habit discussed often but not illustrated. (How come that never caught on as common-sense infection protection elsewhere? It seems to make sense.)


WHO's alert phases. We are at 5, one before "big cartoon splat across the planet." (From Asahi)


This one adds a duck. (From the Mainichi)

New type

Emptied storage facility of a "major mask manufacturer."

Japan is calling this thing "new type influenza" because it's a mix of bird and pig and people flu. I don't think the name has anything to do with religious or corporate sensibilities here. Now the first suspected case, a 17-year-old boy, is taking Relenza and resting in a hospital in Yokohama, and masked reporters are clustered out front, zooming in and out on the building's windows. Apparently the kid is alone in a 26-bed special flu ward. (Another suspected case was found to be regular old Hong Kong flu early this morning.)

It's hard to get a read on how much anyone might be concerned about it since probably 10-15% of people are wearing masks all the time anyway for colds and allergies. The entire country is about to have five days off for Golden Week. Offices will be closed and people will be sitting in traffic jams in individual cars, which seems good for reducing spread, but people will also be crowded on airplanes and at Disneyland, which would be less good. If there's even anything to spread.

USA Today says Japan issued an (incredibly Japanese) advisory asking those who are traveling to Mexico to "consider whether such trips are necessary."

They're telling people to stay home if they feel sick, call a hotline, and then, if necessary, report to a designated flu center. The centers have separate entrances and negative pressure rooms. These sound like effective precautions, if people follow them. There is the cultural barrier to overcome of people insisting on going into work no matter how sick they feel. Probably good that everyone has a few days off.

Swine Flu 101

Japanese news shows are great at making little explanatory graphics. Now, we could impose any number of willful misinterpretations on this diagram (and I hope you will), but it does get to the point.

Japan is pretty far from any recorded outbreak so far. But not really. Nowhere is. They do have fever-cams at the airport, though, that show the temperatures of people coming through arrivals.

They did a photo montage from Mexico (with ominous sound effects) and interviewed a Japanese boxer living there who said it was a little scary and he didn't want to go outside. Then they scrummed Japanese arrivals from Mexico at the airport. A tanned youngish man in a ballcap blinked in the camera lights and said he had no idea what they were talking about.

A NY correspondent said that a local pharmacy had already sold out of face masks. Panic! (I didn't know we even carried them, but, moving on.)

And then, they gave a list of things people should prepare at home - 50 face masks per person, canned food for a month, liters of clean water, a hand-crank flashlight and radio, etc. Which sounds out of proportion and crazy. But not completely.

Incidentally, I imagine all the photos of people in face masks are eerie elsewhere, but from here, it looks like a normal day on the subway. Except that the masks are blue and creepy instead of white and creepy.