1 February 2023

During holidays, I spent time watching recently-released films, and some older ones which always make my blood boil: Mission Impossible II (2000), Inferno (2016), and No time to die (2021). It dawned on me that the three named were all about virus warfare, or a disease which might wipe out many people.  I mean, really, these were no good films for festivals, but they allowed me to reflect on the biosecurity on all fronts.

 

Just imagine, a country creating a virus, and sending produce or people to different parts of the world as human bombs or suicide attack-like actions because of much appraised globalization trades, so that the carriers and others who come into contact with are infected and died. The reason behind could be anything. But there is almost no way a border can catch the first troops, until it is too late.  Thanks to intelligence shared among countries, there are more and more easy-to-understand information given to the general public to understand the importance of biosecurity.

 

If you have gone through some immigration routines at different ports, one of which is the officers wiping your carry-on luggage for possible drugs or bio-hazard substances. This is done before you leave a country, and/or entering another country, that is, at the borders.  As people spending time in secondary school setting, we worry little, or we never worry about attacks within. But we must be careful with laboratory supplies, and/or when we are preparing/doing the experiments.  We should be on the alert because bio-hazard may not be detected by our olfactory system, or just visually; upon encountering unfamiliar objects and feeling unwell, treatment must be sought.  Just imagine, if a few students in different schools fell ill of the same attack in a short period of time, the whole city would panic, just like three years ago, we fought for surgical masks and supermarket supplies, and so on. Panic is one thing, the actual danger and its consequence is quite another.

 

Be vigilant.  And oh yes, happy new year of the Rabbit.

 

Anson Yang