The first hint that things had changed were when we drove Anna for her (regular) immunizations this morning. I noticed that bus drivers and conductors were wearing face masks. One driver was indeed wearing the mask, just not actually using it – the mask was done up behind the head, but hanging below his chin! I’ll leave the discussion on whether face masks are actually much use except when worn by people who may have already been infected, or in societies where (some) people spit in the street and regularly cough & sneeze without covering their mouth, for another day.
Irina then spoke to someone who had heard that Astana now had confirmed cases of the A/H1N1 virus, and that either local or national authorities had declared that shop and public workers would now be wearing the aforementioned masks.
So, am I worried, about to go and buy a dozen boxes of face masks? Well, with Anna around I’m naturally concerned, but given that Britain currently has approximately 100,000 new cases declared each week, and that the current variant of Swine Flu hasn’t yet mutated to be highly deadly and/or drug resistant, I’m not about to seal all the windows and doors and demand temperature readings from anyone we come into contact with.
It appears that the three (confirmed, as opposed to six including suspected) cases were with people who had been in Britain for academic studies.
Oh, in case 3rd hand information is not (understandably with this sort of topic) official enough to be considered valid, here is an Azerbaijan site’s report on it! I’m not sure whether this Google News search will work for other people, and whether it will stay up to date with new stories, but you can currently see that only the Asian/Central Asian news services seem to have picked up on the reports.
In case they disappear from Google’s listings, here we have Gazeta.kz’s almost translated into English story, and here we have the Indian branch of Reuters summary. Finally, Kazakhstan Today’s bulletin can be found here.
[edit]
OK, just been for a walk in Astana park. Out of a sample size of approximately 200 people, five were found to be wearing masks. That is if you include another bus driver who had it on, but slung under his chin.
Couple of photos below…
Astana Park Ride Attendant Face Mask Swine Flu
Bus Driver Face Mask Not Worn Swine Flu
July 24th, 2009 8:24 pm
[…] an expat who is living in Astana with his family, wrote the following account on his personal blog (ENG): […] I noticed that bus drivers and conductors were wearing face masks. One driver was indeed […]
September 7th, 2009 4:27 pm
the H1N1 or Swine Flu Virus is very scary at first but now it is well controlled by vaccines and prevention by avoiding going into places with incidence of swine flu.
September 9th, 2009 1:09 am
@Jeam – I stripped out the unrelated keyword and website. I might not have noticed, but both the WP-GotLucky and SEO SearchTerms 2 WordPress plugins alerted me to someone searching for
intitle:swine flu and name (required) and powered by wordpress
That sort of gave it away TBH 🙂
Well controlled by vaccines? I take it you are assuming that no mutations will occur, or if they do they’ll magically still be knocked out by existing meds? Also, prevention now well controlled by not going to places with incidents of swine flu? That is a little rudimentary, and not exactly a new solution. Even if you stay in your home town, unless you intend to prevent anyone else from travelling to other areas, it won’t be very effective.
October 16th, 2009 4:41 pm
H1N1 or Swine Flu is a bit scary but it a good thing to note that this virus is not that very deadly.,, .
October 16th, 2009 6:33 pm
@DNKS42. Please see the comment above that was directed at Jeam.
Same search was detected. Goodbye URL…
Less argument with the comment itself than Jeam at least.
March 17th, 2010 3:01 pm
[…] wearing masks in Astana out of fear of the swine flu has gone down considerably (see here and here for Chris Merriman’s pics of maskopolooza), I still see the occasional mask. And you never […]
April 20th, 2010 1:33 pm
We should be thankful that the swine flu did not spread very rapidly. it is not very deadly like Ebola but swine flu can still kill you.
April 23rd, 2010 1:17 pm
This post continues to attract a lot of spam like comments.
I’ve approved a few, with links removed, including the one above, in the hope that other blog readers will find them and be able to identify spammers on their own sites a little more easily.
Cathy, see my reply to Jeam above, and if you are particularly desperate to get comments approved with your link intact, you might want to…
Not use some system of auto submitting comments (it meant that this post received three identical comments from you!)
Possibly target your comments to those more closely related to your own site. Hormone replacement doesn’t really naturally sit with Swine Flu IMO.
Check the output from your program (if you must use one) before committing to submitting comments to peoples’ blogs – your comment had strange areas which looked like line breaks converted into tabs, halfway through a sentence.
Vary the content a little more – there are currently around 3000 comments on other blogs with identical text!
In the unlikely circumstance that you really did come here (and all those other sites) personally, happen to run the site you mentioned, and crafted the comment by hand, my apologies.
Finally, if you want to contact me to arrange for a post with links, use the link at the top of this site.