KOBE, JAPAN
Does wearing a surgical mask while singing karaoke decrease infections?
The swine flu has come as an unexpected benefit to some karaoke parlors in Japan. Over 4,432 kindergartens, schools, college and universities have been closed this week at the request of the government, to help contain the cases of swine flu. Nationally, Japan has the fourth largest number of cases of the flu and fortunately no one in the country has died from it.
So what happens when you have hundreds of thousands of bored school kids who are supposed to stay home? Of course, they all want to go out and have some fun since they have some unexpected and unscheduled days off. So away they go to the nearest karaoke club.
A karaoke club manager said: “We suddenly had a number of high school students after 2pm yesterday, right after the announcement that schools would close for a week. All of our karaoke rooms were full at one point, and I’m expecting something similar today. I don’t have the right to say something like ‘you should stay at home.’”
However, another manager who was interviewed indicated that about 10 different groups of high school students came to his establishment yesterday. He said he declined to accept the students when he found they were supposed to stay at home while their schools were closed.
Some of the first outbreaks in Japan were between the students of two schools who got together for a volleyball tournament.
Wonder if this Japanese invention would allow all the kids to sing without spreading germs around?
