Snapshots: Tourists Are Still Scared of Swine Flu?!?

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WTF. Seriously? This is what I saw during lunch today walking towards Times Square on 45th Street btw. 6+7th Ave. (I wasn’t quick enough with the camera to catch her friend… also with mask.)  If anything, it’s us who should be wearing masks to protect ourselves from you out of towners! Well, maybe not a mask so much as a giant people plow to clear a path towards lunch…

17 Comments

  • Funny, I knew that street just from the picture.

    Perhaps she’s less afraid of swine flue and more afraid of all the construction debris you inevitably have to breath in while walking through manhattan. For a country in a recession, manhattan construction appears to be doing just fine. Just the other day eye was shut for like 5 minutes cause some grit made it’s way past my glasses when walking past the construction on 57th between 6th and 7th.

  • Oh, my recognition was from the construction, not the o’lunney’s and ginormous BOND 45 sign…

  • When I spent time in Japan it wasn’t unusual to see those masks around. There the person wearing the mask was the one with a cold. I have no first hand, or mouth, knowledge but my friend living there said it could be considered polite. Neon plaid might be more of a Japanese shibboleth than the flu mask though.

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    People wear masks for other reasons than swine flu. Severe allergies or respiratory problems, to name a couple. Don’t judge unless you know what’s going on.

  • @eb123 – but judging when I have no idea what’s going on is what i do best! :-)

  • I saw a girl just like this in Penn Station the other day, alson one on the train with a teal mask. It just looks ridiculous.

  • inb4 Masked Avenger logs on and posts, ha ha…

  • WE should flame thrower Mexicans.

    Yes

    Muppets.

  • I’m surprised she wasn’t also carrying an open umbrella..

  • Rudy don’t make me go over there and spank you!!

  • Haha. I saw several ppl walking around with their masks on last week. They were all asian too. Oh well. Whatever.

  • Mama, i was beinhg ironic……mind you if Scarlett and ana came with you….maybe some butter….i’ll sent the Citation 2* over now!

    *(its a plane)

  • In Japan (and perhaps other Asian countries) folks of all ages wear masks all the time because of allergies. It’s hay fever season this time of the year, the masks are used in an attempt to keep that at bay. This has nothing to do with the swine flu, for them it’s an every day normal thing, the masks come in different shapes and colors, on the subway there we saw quite a few decorated with different cartoon characters as well.

    They also wear them if they are sick as it’s considered rude to couch and wheeze on the people around you.

  • @ LordJezo: On the way home on the subway yesterday, there was this guy hacking and phlegmin’ it up. This – on the same day that that dude in Queens died from swine flu. That man got so many evil looks. I’d be surprised if he made it out of there!

    Isn’t it strange how the face masks make you think that they’re sick? When it reality..it’s probably that they are healthy and don’t want to get sick? Weird.

  • ugh my boss is SUPER sick and though he stayed home yesterday he came in today and he is coughing ALL over us. I’m about to go buy some masks for the whole office….

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    Like LordJero said, in Asia people wear masks when they have a cold/flu… It’s common courtesy to wear a mask so you don’t spread your germs all over the place.. (coughing into your hand then grabbing that subway poll won’t really do anything for anyone else)

    Just out of curiosity, how did you know they were tourists?

    The last time i checked the instances of H1N1 Swine Flue were far greater in the United States than in Asia as a whole. So people coming from anywhere in Asia should be far more concerned with catching Swine Flu here than people here catching it in Asia…

    I love your blog.. but this is just some ignorant ass shit…

  • I’m going to reinforce the comment that a lot of Asian people wear masks… I don’t really know why though so I’ll just go with general consensus… and that the girl in the above pic doesn’t look like a tourist (though maybe not a native NYer). Also, with Bloomy’s speech yesterday, more people are hitting the hospitals etc… so I expect more and more of this type of thing to show up.

    Also, I’m not one to freak out at the first sign of these things, but the areas affected in Queens are all very close to me, and I share bus/train/air with the people who live in those areas… so it’s a little scary. I’m not wearing a mask (because I don’t see how wearing a mask would prevent the germs from entering my lungs – aren’t they microscopic?) but I am using Purell a lot more now.

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