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Webcams to Enforce Singapore Quarantine
magarity writes "Singapore has hired a private security firm to install internet connected webcams in homes of persons quarantined for SARS in order to watch them to see if they go out. They are considering adding electronic wristbands as well. 9 of the 490 persons have broken the quarantine despite a fine of 10,000 singapore dollars ($5,621US). Just over 100 people worldwide have died from SARS so far."
... and in reality is worn about the neck. It comes with a detonatable charge to sever the individual's neck should they attempt to go further than the 8' extension cord allows. Please hope they find an outlet in the bathroom
Now, all dilbert joking aside, this is one disease that scares me... without a common vector identified.... we might all be in for it.
Failing that, meet in in Boulder. Mother Abigail said that The Dark Man is gathering his own on the other side of the mountains. . .
You are not the customer.
The hottest sluts with mysterious respiratory diseases are waiting to chat with YOU!
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
So, who wants to take bets on how soon people will hack into these government quarantine webcams and then blackmail people to keep their private lives from being publicly displayed?
Suicide Booth: You are now dead! Thank you for using Stop and Drop, America's favorite since 2008.
Before you start on about 1984, this is happening in Singapore, not the US.
And to head off the inevitable Ashcroft / Patriot Act recriminations, please offer actual *proof* of claims that our civil liberties are being eroded.
hey dickhead - if it truly has a 4% mortality rate, that will kill 1/25 people.
thats at least one student in a highschool class.
at least one person in your extended family.
it does need to be quarantined, or we are all fscked.
... hi bingo
Looks like we may get lucky this time -- hopefully. If a real killer virus hits, we're all doomed. :(
The people will be called randomly during the day and asked to turn on the camera to confirm that they are really there. The camera will not always be on. Just an extra precaution to make sure people don't just have someone else answer their phone.
This is the story of 490 strangers forced to live in a quarantine block together and find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting SARS...
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
For those, like me, who didn't know a whole lot about SARS, someone typed up a real nice Wikipedia entry on SARS, including a nice table of diagnosed cases per country.
fifth sigma, inc.
A 60 minutes segment yesterday reminded views that SARS is far less dangerous than Malaria.
Malaria kills almost 1 million world wide per year.
It is also important to mention that SARS could just be a wake up call, one which prods the public to pursue these deadly diseases. If anything, SARS will establish guidelines to prevent future disease outbreaks.
http://www.cbsnews. com/stories/1998/08/01/48hours/main22761.shtml
Life is like pants... fit in or you don't fit in.
It's only 4% because people are acting quickly to try and stop it from spreading. I live and work around Toronto (which is one of the places where SARS has shown up with a vengence in Canada), and believe me, it's a big freakin' deal. I had to go the doctor for treatment of strep throat and there was a form I had to fill out about SARS and every medical person there had a filter mask on and wouldn't go NEAR you until they determined you weren't a SARS risk.
Like some others have said, how would YOU feel if someone you knew was one of those 4%. I think your knee would jerk pretty high.
The 4% mortality rate is before all of the hospitals are full and before the world's supply of available respirators is exhausted. If 1,000,000 people in one country catch this, things could be different.
I'm just hoping that this virus mellows out a little bit as it goes through multiple generations in humans, as some viruses have been known to do. That might be the only way it will slow down.
Law enforcement agencies all over America are in the process of laying off 85% of their police force in favor of 100 strategically placed web cams across the United States.
...in Toronto, causing Ontario public health officials to order 197 people into isolation.
And, by the way, it's now been discovered to be a relative of one of the many viruses that cause the common cold. But that kind of got overshadowed by all the war news.
As did the anti-war protest database being kept by the NYPD. But ignore this, it's off topic.
This would mean, for example, that in a few years we may have airborne varient strains of other viruses. Now, should an airborne strain of some slow infection cycle be created (like HIV/AIDS, or a pneumonia with a very slow cycle), then most of the world will be infected before the first casualty occurs. Obviously this is fatal situation for mankind. It's not the quick diseases like ebola that we have to fear, it's the slow ones.
Hope it doesn't happen, but with population densities growing I expect that it will.
Comments?
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
Perhaps because Measles has a mortality rate of only about 0.2%? CDC Reference. There is also a vaccine for measles (which I'm sure contributes to the mortality rate listed on that page)
With SARS we're also dealing with something we don't entirely understand yet. I'm personally impressed with how serious it's being treated. If anything, it helps us practice in case of a more significant situation.
Better safe than sorry, you know?
That's what they're doing here in Toronto. People that are refusing to obey the voluntary isolation are being forcibly confined. Some are also being changed by police. /. uhh, I mean working.
In fact one school and an office (HP in markham) have been closed because people refused to obey the voluntary isolation.
I even have family that works in one of the hospitals downtown. There's a lot of FUD about SARS on the news, but I'm not worried. I don't know anyone who's sick and while there are a few new cases being announced, the spread isn't rapid. So I'll just keep reading
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
...which killed upwards of 20 MILLION people, had a mortality rate of 3%.
SARS seems to be *at least* as transmissible as the 1918 flu was.
That's why.
Did they come out of retirement?
Singapore does not have a Chinese government. SIngapore is a seperate country.
Your opinions are severly prejudice.
Singapore is a western country, with a high GDP, a less corrupt government than the US (read corporate influence). The racial mix of SG is Malay, Chinese and others, christian, muslim and buddhist in strong numbers. There is no clear majority [do all people with 'slitty eyes' look the same to you?].
Take Hawaii for example, a mix of Pacific Islanders, Japanese, Chinese White and African Americans - would you like to call that an East Asian country full of people "_NOT_ like us"???
Your numbered points are laughable - take point 2 for some crass idiocy "most Taiwanese want Tibet to be in one China" - Taiwanese believe China is an occupied country and Taiwan should take control of it!!! Totally opposite!
I hope you are as unsuccessful as you are stupid, you surely deserve it.
Evidently this is not your quote, but I wonder if the author has ever been to Singapore. It's one of the cleanest countries in the world. I know, I've been there, and many other SE Asian countries.
Put it this way, they're so concerned about keeping the city clean, that even chewing gum is banned.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
Part of the problem is out over-reliance on anti-bacterial soaps|sponges|cuttingboard|etc.
The more we 'sanitize' our society the more susceptible we all are when a big bad bug comes along. Personally, I keep myself clean and all, but I will not use anti-bacterial products, with the excpetions of neosporin when I cut myself. The minute amounts of bactieria, firuses, molds, etc that I probably ingest build my immune system.
Its not a statistically good sampling, but of my friends that are anti-bacterial everything, and my friends that are more like me. The ones that dont use anti-bacterial products tend to get sick less often, and are sick for shorter durations than the people I know that are nuts about anti-bacterial products.
So I think we need to watch out for these sanitary guidelines - too much is a bad thing.