I’m not being paranoid… am I?

Note: This post was written Sunday night.

As I mentioned last Monday, one of our teachers at the school had contracted swine flu. Now I wasn’t 100% sure that she had actually gone to the hospital and had this confirmed by a doctor, but apparently, according to one of my co-workers, she had. The only reason I say this is that whenever one of my students is away absent, all the other students tell me they have swine flu, when they don’t, seeing as they usually turn up the next day.

So we didn’t expect to see her for a good week, the required time for quarantine for swine flu, or at least 24 hours after the last of the fever has disappeared.

Although in typical Korean fashion she was back to work in 4 days. Why? No doubt worried that she might lose her job for taking that extra one, critical, day off, to ensure she is 100% over it.

The scary thing about all of this is that she still had a cough and despite all the teachers being told to wear masks, she decided not to wear one. How can you come back from H1N1, still with a cough and feel you don’t need to wear a mask to stop the slightest of chance of infecting someone else.

The weirdest thing of all was that all the Korean teachers decided, on the day that she returned, to stop wearing their masks and instead have one teacher go around every class with a bottle of sanitizer and make all the students disinfect their hands.

It just doesn’t make any sense!

As you can imagine, none of this sat well with either me or the other foreign teachers. During one of the breaks I had a quick word with Kris and he felt the same way about being somewhat anxious around someone who just had the virus and them not taking any precautions to prevent it spreading. As a result I had a chat with Brenda, our acting head teacher for the next few months, and explained the way we felt. I stated the following points;

• Why is the Korean teacher who had the virus not wearing a mask? If anyone should be wearing one, it should be her. For her not to, and to teach young children, is reckless, irresponsible, and displays gross negligence on behalf of the school.
• Why are the Korean teachers not wearing their masks when such a big deal was made for us to wear ours (and we still were on Friday)?
• Why are they making the students sanitize their hands starting from today and yet easing off on the other precautions?
• Getting H1N1 is bad enough without having to get it overseas where the laws treat foreigners very differently when they contract the virus.
• 3 of the 4 teachers will be leaving the country within a few months, including myself, and don’t want to jeopardize our ’status’ before travelling.

These, I felt, were excellent points and the head teacher agreed entirely with me. She really didn’t give any explanation as to why things were the way they were, but heavily agreed that the Korean teacher in question should wear a mask and would tell her to do so. She also reassured me that the other Korean teachers weren’t wearing masks not because the Korean teacher would feel bad.

For the rest of the day, all 4 hours of it, not once did I see her wearing a mask despite her feeling ok to cough around the office. Nor did any other Korean put a mask on either.

The only people wearing masks were Kris, Miranda, Rob, and I, and at least a third of the students. No doubt all the students would have wore face masks if they knew one of the Korean teachers had contracted it within the same week.

While I understand the likelihood of myself contracting H1N1 from the teacher in question as minimal, I don’t see the point in tempting fate. I don’t hold the impression that I’m being overly paranoid either by suggesting she wear a mask.

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see if today holds any changes.

Urgent Update: I received a call late Sunday night that Kris, one of the foreign teachers I work with at the hagwon, has come down with a suspected case of H1N1. This isn’t looking good…

3 Comments

• 

  By Aaron Miller, 9/11/2009 - Monday @ 9:58 am

  Christ. Buy her a mask and leave it on her desk with a friendly reminder note.

• 

  By David, 9/11/2009 - Monday @ 10:09 am

  Aaron: That’s exactly what I thought!

Other Links to this Post

1. Staypuff.net » Amendment; Canadian co-worker has suspected H1N1. — 9/11/2009 - Monday @ 10:14 am

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