What Kills Us this Week!

HK Magazine and I are parting ways. I've decided the reason I'm always wrong about what Hong Kong's biggest panic is for the week - as you know, each week Hong Kongers panic about something new which they're absolutely convinced is going to kill them - is that they've got some new young-dude intern who's doing the choosing. Have you noticed that each of the last five weeks, this dude has chosen some threat from cyberspace? Or the world of technology? I mean, s/he could be right and all the new Threatdowns are coming from techo-cyber-whato-space, but I'm old-fashioned enough to still think they're organic.

So this week, I'm choosing for my Threatdown:

ANONYMOUS GUANGZHOU TRAVELLER

Have you heard this story? It's the big one that currently has HK all aflutter! Clare Lennon was a very nice young teacher from London who was here under the HK NET Scheme, which means she was teaching English in a local HK Primary School. And she was someone much beloved by all the kiddies, and had heaps of friends who were also in the HK NET Scheme.

Then she started coughing.

Tests came back and turns out she'd tested positive for TB.

Anyway, meanwhile Clare's mum and dad were worried so came to HK, took one look and immediately hiked her on a plane back to London to be treated there ...

... not knowing yet it was TB ...

... so the hospital in London stuck her into quarantine while they ran more tests ...

... and she was dead within a day.

Rampant Tuberculosis! And it took only 14 days to kill her.

But that's only one part of the story! The other part is that HK's in a flutter and the Health Department is pulling in Clare's students and friends and they're finding cases of TB among them! And, sadly, that includes the lovely best friend mentioned above who sat with her in hospital and patted her back so she could cough more easily.

And the third part of this story is that now the Health Department is asking THE BIG QUESTION: where the hell did Clare get TB? And that's when China - dear sweet Mainland China - our kindly Big Brother to the North - says "Oh, maybe it's that dude with that new rampant strain of antibiotic-resistant Tuberculosis who travels between Guangzhou and HK on a regular basis!"

So, yeah, yeah, all hell is breaking loose with HK screaming righteously at China saying "Why the hell didn't you tell us!" and China going "Ooooh, why so stroppy, dudes!" OK, I just made that one up, but what they did actually say was worse "We don't have laws about Notification of Communicable Diseases, so we don't have to tell anyone!" and this after promising, after SARS, that in future they would let HK know about their Communicable Diseases! Lying toads!!!

And, yeah!, what's with the story about letting this dude freely travel back and forth between countries? Anywhere else in the world, he'd be in the strictest quarantine, yet here he is, forever shuttling around on the HK-Guangzhou Express, and god knows where and what else. It is the most dangerously irresponsible thing I have ever heard!

HK-Guanzhou Express Train

Check it out! Those are cloth seats. The TB bacillae stays alive outside the body for up to five days, and those seats can't be wiped down and sterilised. Honestly, it's beyond irresponsible. It's criminally negligent!

As you probably already know, my dad was one of the doctors responsible for wiping out the hideously scary global Post-War Tuberculosis epidemic back in the 50s, and when the disease started to make a come-back in the late 90s, my very worried father used to say "People have forgotten to be afraid!" So, yeah, I think this whole episode of China's criminal negilgence just goes to show that my dad was right! People have forgotten to be afraid of this terrible, terrible disease!

Anyway, that's where things currently stand: with a stand-off between HK and China, and Clare's friends in hospital getting treatment for what is, hopefully, NOT the particularly nasty strain of the disease that this Mainland guy has been shuttling down over the border on a regular basis!

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? Honestly, that makes me so very, very cross. People have forgotten to be afraid of this terrible, terrible disease! And what with the mishandling of the recent cases, it's now resistant to antibiotics so ... la la la THREATDOWN!!!

HK MAGAZINE'S THREATDOWN

OK, I'm wrong again. They've chosen "The Drug-toting Homing Pigeons". Twenty points for cute!

The story goes that the HK Prison has drug-dealing inmates on the inside, and they smuggle the drugs in using homing pigeons. Turns out they got caught because they got greedy and guards noticed that the pigeons were coming in lop-sided or fluttering dangerously close to the ground because they were so burdened.

Mmmm, wonder what PETA would make of that!