5. Banning Cheek Kissing
Lebanon’s Health Minister, Mohammad Khalifeh announced on April 28 that all Lebanese people should eschew the national custom of kissing on the cheek as a greeting.
4. Shutting Mexican Citizens Out
Cuba rushed to suspend all flights to and from Mexico for at least 48 hours. Argentina soon followed with its own ban on direct flights from the epidemic’s epicenter, and ordered 60,000 visitors who had recently arrived from Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. to contact the Health Ministry. Japan, which to date has no reported cases of swine flu, has ceased issuing visas to Mexican nationals, and France is encouraging the entire E.U. to ban flights to Mexico.
3. Turning the Name Into a Religious Debate
An Israeli official inferred religious significance from the title of “swine flu”. Earlier last week, Israel’s deputy health minister, Yakov Litzman, a member of an ultra-Orthodox party, declared that “swine flu” should not be used because it contains the name of an animal banned by Judaism. His proposed alternative? “Mexican flu.”
2. Slaughtering Every Pig in Your Country
Second place goes to Egypt, whose government decided that since the virus originated from pigs, the best way to keep it out is to kill every pig in your borders. So that’s what they did. This week, Health Ministry workers began slaughtering the roughly 300,000 pigs unfortunate enough to reside there—a number that would have been far higher were Egypt not a predominantly Muslim country.
1. Wait, an Epidemic Started Here? Should We Do Something?
It’s been over two weeks since the first victim died in Mexico, and the Mexican government’s initial response hovered just above chaotic. For one, the authorities still haven’t provided the families of the dead—i.e., those most likely to have been exposed to the virus—with medicine. Nor has the government pinpointed where the outbreak began, or how it spread. And while officials are urging anyone who feels sick to go to hospitals, the AP reports that sick individuals are complaining that ambulance workers refuse to pick them up.
The Mexican health agency’s utter lack of organization or mobilization—despite a more than $5 billion annual budget—is understandably causing a crisis of faith among Mexican citizens, according to the AP.
Thanks to Discover for a majority of the info.
