Flu fashion

TRUST the Japanese to come up with some stylish, fashionable surgical masks to protect you from the flu viruses. I want to get my hands on one of these.

So far my favorites are the geisha mask,

(Photo from the Hara Museum Online Shop.)

...and the Rising Sun mask of Yoriko Yoshida, a well-known Japanese illustrator.

(Photo from Pink Tentacle.)
Coolness.

De La Salle suspends classes due to H1N1 (w/ updates)

IN case you still haven't heard La sallistas, you have no classes from June 4 to 13. According to Health Secretary Francisco Duque, an exchange student was found infected with the Influenza A/H1N1 virus and may have had contact with at least 120 other people. (Click here.)

Keep safe everyone. Wash your hands properly. And stay away from other people if you already have the virus. Go into quarantine.

(UPDATE 1:40 a.m.) I've heard that a case of Influenza A infection has also been discovered at the Manila headquarters of the Asian Development Bank. Stay tuned for more details.

(UPDATE 06/04/09 at 5:47 p.m.) Influenza A case at ADB confirmed

Important news we missed while we were glued to the Hayden-Katrina faceoff

1. RP has now 10 H1N1 cases

Scary. Wash your hands well!

2. RP economy ‘teetering toward recession’

But I think we'll be okay this year. Spoke w/ some businessmen recently; the second quarter results look promising. You know what the Chinese say: "Crisis means opportunity."

3. BSP cuts interest rates

Well, if you think the interest rates on your savings accounts were too low, this move will cut them further. Even if you go to higher-yielding deposit instruments like SDA's or 5-yr tax-free special savings accounts, your interest rates will be eaten up by inflation.

4. Navy whistleblower Gadian surfaces at CA hearing

I hope Gadian's safety is well-secured. You know what happened to the other whistleblowers in the military.

5. Arroyo: There will be elections in 2010

Of course, we don't believe her. And looks like there's trouble in paradise as the Kampi head Luis Villafuerte was absent at the merger announcement this morning. He has resigned from the party in protest of the merger. Even former Phil. president Fidel V. Ramos, chairman emeritus of the Lakas-CMD party, was nowhere to be found. (Sick daw.)

According to broadcaster Ricky Carandang, the new merged party's name is PaLaKa. Hahahaha!

Here we go again

I'M feeling a bit under the weather today, folks. The heat was just sweltering yesterday and I was going in and out of airconditioned places. I also think I've been too anxious about this A/H1N1 flu that I've literally scrubbed away even the helpful bacteria from my body.

Like I interviewed this businessman who just came from New York and as soon as we finished talking, I went to the restroom to wash my hands. I washed my hands so many times yesterday (yes while I sang 2 Happy Birthday songs, not aloud though, people might think I'm touched in the head), it's surprising my hands haven't bled yet. So ironically, now I feel a bit flu-ish, if not, foolish. To top it off, I didn't win last night's P168 million Superlotto. Blast!

Anyhoo, BusinessMirror columnist Manuel Buencamino has this interesting take on the foolishness that's been going on our squalid part of the world. Not only have we become illiterate, as PDI columnist Conrad de Quiros has declared, we've become humor-less as well. We can't help Sen. Bong Revilla's brain condition, but I can't understand why even Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel, an Ateneo graduate at that, and who I thought was an intelligent smart non-traditional politician, has succumbed to the same silliness as well.

(I used to think Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel was such a great congresswoman, until she started taking issue w/ non-issues.)

Methinks, many of our countrymen's so-called patriotism, nationalism and politically correctness have become misplaced. And I've said it all before at the height of the Desperate Housewives and Jon Stewart controversies; it's like we're suffering from some weird superiority complex that masks how inferior we feel towards other nationalities, that we have to keep lashing out at them just to prove we're such patriotic citizens. If you're so patriotic, why don't you follow traffic rules and pay the correct taxes? Pwede ba?

It's true, what Buencamino says. Because of this furor over these TV shows, now I've become oversensitive to other people's stupidities that everytime I make a joke, sarcastic remark, or use irony in any of my comments/writings, I have to put a parenthesis w/ the words, "joke!" or "joke lang!" I miss those days when we didn't have to explain too much bec. everyone got the joke.

Here's Buencamino's latest dispatch from the Enchanted Kingdom:

Explain the jokes ‘naman’, please
By Manuel Buencamino
BusinessMirror, May 27, 2009

A chip on the shoulder is not a sign of patriotism. It’s the mark of an inferiority complex.—Philip Gilmore

I don’t get the patriotic furor over Alec Baldwin’s remark. “I’d love to have more kids. I’m thinking about getting a Filipina mail-order bride at this point, or a Russian. I don’t care, I’m 51.” I suspect “mail-order bride” had something to do with it, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why.

A mail-order bride is a woman who chooses a different route to marriage. She is not a slut. She is not morally inferior to a woman who opts to be courted in the traditional manner. (Click here for the rest.)

DOH mum on flu patient's activities

(Health Secretary Francisco Duque announces first case of Influenza A/H1N1 infection in the Philippines. Photo from AFP.)

THE Department of Health has been doing what it terms "contract tracing" on the case of the 10-year-old girl found to be infected with Influenza A/H1N1 virus. But is keeping a lid on where she went since she arrived in the country on May 18. If she went to the mall, she would have already passed on the virus to other mallgoers.

The DOH officials also didn't want to identify what airport the child's plane landed in bec. it would identify where she is located. However, they did say that the passenger manifest of the plane which the child rode on is currently being reviewed so that the other passengers would be contacted for observation purposes.

The child's family, of course, has requested for privacy. I hope the family was forthcoming enough to inform their friends and relatives abroad who their child came in contact with, of the current situation so they too can be vigilant and observe their own households for possible infection.

For more notes on the presscon of DOH Secretary Duque last night, click reporter Dana Batnag's blog.

Don't panic!

DoH confirms first A(H1N1) case in RP

By Anna Valmero
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 22:26:00 05/21/2009

MANILA, Philippines—(UPDATE) The Department of Health (DoH) confirmed the first case of A(H1N1) influenza in the country Thursday night.

“The DoH confirms today the first case of A(H1N1) in the Philippines. She is a female traveler who arrived in the country on May 18 from the United States, whose throat specimen tested positive based on results from the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine,” Health Secretary Francisco Duque said in a press conference at the World Health Organization Regional office in Manila. (Click here for the rest.)

AS a journalist, that's what I want to tell you. But personally, I'm really scared that the Influenza A virus has finally landed in Manila and has infected a young child who just arrived from the States and Canada. This is not good. Let's just pray that it won't spread nationwide.

As Sec. Duque says, this calls for vigilance and honesty. Pls. start thinking of the welfare of your fellow citizens. If you came from countries where Influenza A was prevalent, or have been in contact w/ people who came from those places, and you suddenly feel flu-ish, pls. pls. pls. have yourself checked immediately. In this situation, it's better to be a hypochondriac and err on the side of safety, to make sure you don't infect others.

In the meantime, bring out those masks and hand sanitizers. Try as much as possible to stay away from crowded places. A virus w/ such a virulent strain can easily spread. So pls. be careful.

Here is a poster guide from the World Health Organization on how to wash our hands. The length of time one washes hands should be the time it takes to sing two "Happy Birthday" songs. This is no joke. Spread the word: Clean hands can save your life.


(Click to enlarge.)

Conspiracy theory on the swine flu

MIGGY and I were recently discussing about the swine flu and I, in my usual conspiracy theory mode, ventured that for all we know, Influenza A (formerly known as swine flu) caused by the H1N1 virus, is a result of experiments by the U.S. government. After all, nuclear weapons and missiles will no longer be the weapons of choice when a country goes to war; it will most probably engage in biological warfare. The U.S. government cannot afford not to have such a capability, otherwise it will be at the mercy of warmongering countries who already have biological weapons of mass destruction.

As it turns out, the CDC had in fact, planned to do experiments on avian flu and mix it with the virus that causes human influenza back in 2004. Even the World Health Organization had begged CDC to do these experiments to prepare the world against a possible flu pandemic. So Influenza A maybe was not made by mad genius evil scientists in the U.S. for use by the U.S. military when it goes to war, but it still could be the result of actual experiments. Read this and this.