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?
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.
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
Those bastards, trying to keep their proteins from denaturing! Hang them, hang them high!
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
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?
In other news it was discovered that vampires are able to raise their body temperature high enough to fool heat cameras meant to detect the undead by drinking a gallon of hot coffee right before they pass the cameras.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
...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.
Why? So you can look at her delicious kind-of-reddish-coloured breast outlines and those sexy blueish-green thighs?
its second purpose is to discover when lizard people have infiltrated our society
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!
Anecdotal, of course... but a coworker of mine flew to China last week and took tylenol and cough medicine specifically to reduce the chance that he'd exhibit symptoms that could be mistaken for the flu. His travel agent suggested he do this, since if one person on the plane exhibited flu symptoms, all the passengers would have been quarantined for 7 days.
Asian countries (like South Korea and China) are primed to respond quickly and strongly to pandemic threats, due to their recent experience with the avian flu.
Another coworker of mine was supposed to fly to China to visit family this summer... her friends and family have told her that they won't see her if she goes, since there are confirmed cases of H1N1 Mexican flu in our area. So she's putting off the trip until the vaccine is available.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Sorry to post two responses, but I forgot another significant issue.
A lot of countries require incoming travelers to answer some questions about their health, to help prevent the spread of disease. Not sure if the country in question is currently doing this, but I suspect they are.
So you won't be allowed to board the plane unless you answer "no" when asked if you've had any symptoms of illness.
So the fact that they took a fever-reducer means they knew they were ill; the fact that they answered no to the question means they knew they weren't supposed to travel while ill; so the the conclusion is that they took the antipyretic partly to avoid detection.
Assuming, of course, that the country in question requires incoming travelers to answer the questions about illness.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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
There are several very fundamental problems with your logic:
I've been there back in summer of 2005---sick in Italy on the last day of a two week trip---and let me tell you that it isn't fun. I started out the first leg (from Italy to Heathrow) not feeling great but not terrible. It felt like a cold. By the time I left Heathrow, I was feeling miserable. By the time I got to California, it was a good thing my parents were in town visiting and could pick me up where the bus dropped me off. I would not have been able to roll my luggage the three blocks from where the bus dropped me off back to my house. Staying behind, however, was clearly not an option. I was sick for almost two weeks after that, and would have ended up spending upwards of $4,000 to postpone my return that far, not to mention the problem of getting to medical care without anyone there to drive me, the problem of getting food, etc.
While it's a nice idea (in theory) to avoid traveling while sick, in practice, it is a rather naive notion that doesn't take into account the practicality of doing so. One cannot "stay home" if one gets sick while already away from home.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
You could stay home when other people are sick. Not sure where in the constitution it says healthy people have right to travel when sick people don't.
No one mentioned the word "rights" here, nor is it even a question. Nor is the U.S. Constitution relevant in even the slightest of ways. I really doubt that the Vietnamese, must less most of the world really care one bit about our constitution, nor should they. Countries have the right to restrict foreign travelers, if you break their entry laws, your breaking laws and are free to accept the consequences. This too is fine. If you don't like their laws, no one is forcing you to go there.
Most Government's, including the U.S. have the right to quarantine people for the good of the public health. This is also fine. If you, exercising your rights to be an inconsiderate asshat, endanger hundreds of people, then your rights to travel can, and should, be temporarily suspended. This makes perfect sense.
Can we please stop with this "the Constitution says I have the right to do whatever the hell I please" meme. It doesn't, and it goes against the legal and philosophical trends that lead to the foundation of the US. Your rights stop the second they infringe on someone else's. You don't have the right to be a dick.
Also can we stop with this "The U.S Constitution is somehow universally relevant to other sovereign nations" bull. No one cares. Hell, we decided the Constitution isn't even valid to large swaths of people in the US, or held against their will on US soil. Why should any country treat us differently?
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey