Slashdot Mirror
Passengers Cheat Flu Scan With Fever Reducers
Nguyen Van Chau, head of Ho Chi Minh City's Health Department, has revealed that many sick passengers who flew to Ho Chi Minh City used fever reducers to fool temperature scanners at the airport. The government has confirmed 26 people infected with H1N1 flu, 23 of whom came by air after traveling in the United States or Australia. State media reports that the discovery of these scanner cheaters led to the detection of several infected cases later.
How can you call a desired outcome of taking asprin (reducing a fever) with cheating?
WTF? Over?
It seems unlikely that they took the fever reducers strictly as a means of fooling the scanners. Common flu signs include aches and pains, and most of the pain relievers also reduce fevers.
The article doesn't really explain whether this was deliberate cheating. Did any of these folks see a doctor who straight up told them "Yes, you have this dangerous flu virus, please avoid airline travel because we need to contain it?" Otherwise, it's not unusual for people to feel the onset of a cold or flu and take "medicine" (i.e. symptom blockers) so they can feel better and avoid missing work. Is it strange that people might do this to avoid missing a flight (and aren't airplane tickets often non-refundable?) with no intention of cheating anything? I mean, if you stopped random people in the street and asked them, I doubt most of them would even know that airliners have body-temperature scanners.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
...can someone lend me that cool (but useless) thermal scanner so I can watch that hot girl that lives next door? That would be definitely useful.
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
Fever can be caused by lots of things. H1N1 isn't the only possible fever-inducing pathogen, and you can even have fever without having an infection. Preventing people with fever from travelling seems kind of an overkill.
What you said and the mentality that would refer to this as "cheating" rather than "we need to implement a better way to screen for this, preferably one that fully informs the airline passengers of our intentions" reminded me of a joke. TSA = Thugs Standing Around.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
This is a misuse of technology and is very much security theatre. You're more likely to prevent the spread of flu by praying to the spaghetti monster. The thing is that people are panicked over this as it has been overhyped by the media. They're willing to put up with any inconvenience as long as they can trade it for a warm (but not too warm or you'll get scanned) safe feeling.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I thought tylenol, ibuprofen, and the like were pretty commonly used when people get sick. How is this news, besides the fact that they decided to implement a ridiculous screening process that is easily bypassed?
Those SOB's took asprin when they had a fever! Get 'em!!!
This comment is just continuing the bullshit that is in the article...
People didn't take fever reducers to fool the scanner. They took an aspirin 'cause they felt like crap.
So this vaunted "flu-scanner" can be fooled simply by taking Tylenol? Are you serious? Shouldn't it be assumed that anyone who is running a fever will most likely be taking fever-reducing medications?
Tell me again what the point of this scanner is?
I have a bad feeling about this...
While you are correct you missed the biggest point. You can carry H1N1 or any virus for days without showing any symptom including fever.
That makes these scanners completely worthless. The goal of these must be to program people to get used to ridiculous measures for their "security."
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
Because in our culture, your security is something that is done to you, not something in which you are actively involved. Being actively involved in your own interests would be a microcosm of self-determination, self-government, personal responsibility, and individualism. You know, those things that this country used to be all about. There is currently something of a war against those things right now, and I believe it's because they are perceived as obstacles by those who would like to see fascism in the USA. To be correctly appreciated, this must be seen not as isolated issues, but in terms of a few basic principles that determine many aspects of life.
To put that another way, you know what would really stop terrorists from hijacking an airplane? Hundreds of well-armed passengers. And no, a bullet hole will not decompress an aircraft.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
i prayed to the spaghetti monster, and i don't have the flu. ergo, it does work
If they avoided detection by the offending scanner, then how were they detected to be scanner cheaters?
Well, given that they infected other people, and eventually epidemiologists tracked them down via the people they infected...
To all those defending those who traveled while sick: I'm sorry, but if there is a travel ban because of a well publicized disease that is killing people, and you don't feel well, sit your selfish ass down in bed where it belongs. My parents raised me to stay home if I was sick, because it's beyond rude to make those around you sick. The regular flu kills kids and the elderly all the time. This one is much nastier.
Let me put it this way: if people had laptops that were infected, were booted off the network because of security software, and then defeated that security software to get online (and infected machines around them, destroying some of them)...what would you say then?
Please help metamoderate.
Or, you know, to prevent a pandemic flu from becoming established inside your borders, thus saving potenitally thousands of lives and countless hours of productivity.
Seriously. The fact that people can be incubating the virus while not presenting symptoms does not mean that identifying those who ARE symptomatic is useless. Identifying people who potentially have the disease, and quarantining them, is one of the most important and effective ways to prevent the spread of communicable disease.
Especially since a vaccine is on the way, the goal right now for any country is to prevent penetration of H1N1 Mexican flu through their borders until the vaccine is widely available.
You may think it's security theater... but then again, we can all be glad you're not the one making the decisions relating to national health concerns on this.
And, FWIW, regarding carrying a virus asymptomatically... almost all viral diseases have predictable incubation times. This is what makes quarantine effective. For example, if you travel to China right now, and someone on your plane has flu-like symptoms, you get quarantined for seven days (several days longer than the incubation time of H1N Mexican flu). So by the end of quarantine, you're either symptomatic, or cleared as not infected.
I'm rambling a bit here, but... the threat of pandemic is real, and fever scanners are a useful tool in helping prevent the spread of the disease. Sure, they're not 100% effective... but for an exponential expansion of victims, a small decrease in vector individuals can drastically reduce the number of people affected before a vaccine is readily available.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
OK, you people have to figure out how things work under a Communist government. The higher-ups want to protect the country from H1N1, all the other Asian countries are doing it. Heat scanners are installed in all airports, with a masked nurse seated nearby filing her fingernails and ignoring the device. We've secured the country! But wait it seems H1N1 cases got through anyway. The higher-ups are furious, they were assured that heat detectors were deployed. Solution? Those shifty foreigners cheated our indigenously made infrared devices. Therefore, no punishment will be meted out as blame has been shifted. Someone always has to take the fall for mistakes, even if they were otherwise fully qualified as health director, head scientist, etc. History is full of officials who got sent to the gulag because they couldn't dodge the blame for something that didn't turn out perfectly.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Why, at least since the War on (some) Drugs. You don't own your body if the government can tell you what you may or may not put into it. Likewise, you don't own your consciousness if the government can tell you that there are authorized and unauthorized ways of altering it. In both cases, you are more like a tenant of your body and of your mind, not an owner. That's one of the major reasons why you don't use manipulative social engineering to solve perceived problems, because it sets some very nasty precedents like this. Precedents which later generations, having few or no counter-examples, grow up to believe are normal and acceptable.
If the War on Drugs actually did anything to reduce the street availability of the substances it seeks to control (do the research; it hasn't), I might feel differently about it, though I doubt it because my opposition to it is rooted in principle. As it has failed to achieve its primary stated goals, I consider it completely without merit and its ill side-effects to be unjustifiable. Anyway, to answer your question, yes we have ceded control over our bodies to the government and we did it a long time ago. We traded it for a little safety that hasn't kept us any safer but has guaranteed a steady flow of money to various criminal organizations by means of the black market. Like anyone else who trades what is priceless for something that has a price, we got screwed. Not only is some buyer's remorse in order, it's long overdue.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The only way to truly stop a pandemic is to stop all travel into your borders unless you have a 100% fullproof system.
It would be a miracle if this sytem caught 1%.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
In the long run, yes it would be necessary to completely close the borders to prevent your population from being exposed.
But we're not dealing with the long run. We're just dealing with the period of time until the vaccine is widely available (and, of course, proof of vaccination will be required for entry).
Why? If your tolerance of false-positive is high, detection systems like this could be considerably more effective than 1%.
And even if it was only 10%... do the math. (0.9*x)^n is far less than (1*x)^n over successive generations (x = number of people each infected person infects, n is the number of generations). Total number of infected people is halved prior to just the sixth generation.
At any rate, we're not talking about preventing penetration ad infinitum -- just until the vaccine is widely available.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I'm not worried about the Asian flu or a pandemic. I'm worried about the entire passenger list becoming infected with a common garden variety flu because ONE asshole decided they needed to fly while they were sick.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!