Just an hour’s layover at Seoul’s Inchon airport was enough to convince me the swine flu is serious. As soon as the plane from San Francisco landed we were surrounded by men and women in turquoise blue masks who instead of handing us our In Transit stickers made us fill out forms.
Have you had a sore throat, runny nose, or fever in the last seven hours? I answered no, even as my allergies tickled the back of my throat. I desperately wanted to blow my nose but willed it not to run as I stood in line. I waited instead for someone to stick a thermometer in my ear.
Obviously all the avian flu and SARS training has paid off.
The other Americans near me were quite amazed at all the fuss. It’s not like we flew in from Mexico one said to another.
But the sign made it clear – Mexico AND the United States were regarded as swine flu zones. Even as the US tries to erect border fences to separate the two, the swine flu has been a reminder that we aren’t that separate at all. In the rest of the world’s eyes we are one landmass.
It’s actually been kind of amusing to watch Americans grapple with the notion that they could be coming FROM a contaminated, dangerous, infectious part of the world. We are used to going to danger zones of yellow fever and malaria and then coming back to our safe cocoons. Sniffing dogs at the airport make sure we don’t bring in some illegal alien herb that might puncture our bubble. I could never donate blood in America – because I’d always been back to India, a malaria country, in the last year.
Now swine flu has reversed the equation. We are suddenly all Mexicans now.
As you land in Seoul and the signs around you herald your arrival from the land of pandemic flu, you could also read it as a sign that says “Welcome to the Rest of the World – your era of splendid isolation is over.”
I thought that would never happen. At least not until pigs could fly.