Tourists, cabbies to get free masks

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• Ajahn

  Discussion 4 : 01/05/2009 at 12:35 AM4

  Well, if everybody in Bangkok starts wearing masks, the air pollution will get worse. After all, have you ever considered how much your lungs contribute to the filtering of air in the city? Without people taking in polluted air and breathing out cleaner air, where will all the sokkeprok go?

• Wombat

  Discussion 3 : 30/04/2009 at 06:58 PM3

  With the pollution levels in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and elsewhere these masks should be given to visitors all year round!

• happy in Bangkok

  Discussion 2 : 30/04/2009 at 03:46 PM2

  The only thing that a face mask will cause right now is help to spread some feeling of panic. Let's face it: until now it seems that this outbreak of the Mexican flu is not any bit more severe than a normal seasonal outbreak of a common flu. An average worldwide outbreak of the common flu causes more than 250'000 deaths worldwide. Is anyone walking around with a facemask during an outbreak of a more common flu?? No!! A facemask will NOT prevent you from getting infected once you inhale the aerosol of an flu patient - there is plenty of medical evidence for that. The only good a facemask really does is reducing the amount of aerosol someone produces who has got the virus. A facemask should be compulsory for those people that suffer from symptoms that could indicate an infection with a flu virus. More than that is just a nuisance for anyone involved. So far there is no one suffering from this new flu in Thailand. It is just completely absurd if someone feels safer by already now wearing a facemask in Bangkok and unfortunately I already see some Asian tourists doing just that. And it certainly defies all the remaining common sense if this person with a facemask and a sense of added safety is crossing any road or sitting on a motorcycle taxi without helmet or actually using any kind of road transportation...it is nothing but a totally lacking sense of any risk proportions involved.
  In the context of this imminent pandemic of a new flu variant the only thing I really fear is fear itself.
  As an industrial microbiologist and being professionally involved in the development of treatments for infectious diseases I know well what I'm talking about..

• Amazing Thailand

  Discussion 1 : 30/04/2009 at 02:05 PM1

  Any effort to curb the spread of the virus is of course welcome but I worry this one will actually just scare a lot of people away from Thailand and not do anything to prevent the flu from spreading.
  
  Furthermore you can be sure that the taxi drivers will not sit 12hrs per day with a mask on their face.
  
  Fortunately there are no cases of this flu in Thailand yet, hence the logical places for concentrated efforts should be the border crossings.
  
  A traveller having reached a guesthouse has already been in contact with a lot of people, giving them masks over there is useless.
  
  Offer them the masks at the airport and issue a leaflet to go with it so they understand the importance of the measures and are not unnecessarily scared.