Welcome to China in an Age of Swine Flu

Sterile white body suits, swimming goggles, face-masks, heavy boots and rubber gloves – six figures dressed as though they were entering a space craft or perhaps a laboratory with a highly contagious disease. Any plane from Australia, a swine flu hotspot, was always going to be suspect. They came onto the plane after we had landed in Shanghai. Temperatures were checked, first with a zap to the forehead and then, if doubt persisted, with a mouth thermometer (that was my fate, but I was cleared).