Recently, I read a news pick about the criticisms over Mexico, blaming it for doing too much damage to their prosperous tourism industry. The reason is simple. People think that Mexico did all this measures from banning restaurants, wasting paper masks, and shutting down schools is kind of suicide for its own. They think that the authority did so called "every effort" but gained little in fighting H1N1 is some kind of joke to itself.

When a newly arrived epidemic break out, it is important for the authority to raise public awareness and to take precaution in fighting against it immediately. But according to the author of the article, some measures taken seems to be unnecessary. From his point of view, Mexico seemed to be a little "stupid" by bothering itself without sufficiently taking control of the outbreak of swine flu. After all, the total toll of this so called "disaster" is no more than that of tobacco-related illness everyday.

What we know is that swine flu is almost under control of most of the advanced country thanks to the rapid treatment and the advanced global health reporting system. But what we don't find behind the whole event is that the self-destructive steps taken by the Mexican authority is the key to the, let's put it this way, initial success. Immediate restriction to all public activities truly costed, but that stopped the demon of swine flu getting the upper hand of this fight in the first place. What if another epidemic, say, a stronger flu, strikes while people take on the easy way they think they should? Precautions is not everything, but that's at least what we can do to eliminate the cost we might have to pay.

Fighting against something we don't know is risky, and this is even more obvious while dealing with a potentially deadly virus. Taking a second guess is not a proper attitude we should ever hold, not to mention in an event like this. Who'd ever know in advance which direction a typhoon would definitely head for? We predict, but meanwhile, we have to do EVERYTHING to eliminate the possible damage, that is, precautions. You don't know how much pain a disaster may cause until you actually encounter it, do you?