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Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)

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Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)

#61

Post by wongarsu »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #57
majewsky wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this also affect tourists? Since I don't live in Japan, I wouldn't expect to have an allergic response to a Japanese native tree.

The reverse would seem more likely - surely a native population is less likely to have a reaction to a native tree - otherwise adaption to their environment is fairly poor....

Allergies work differently from things like lactose intolerance: you are not born with allergies but develop them as a sort of misclassification from your immune system. Thus if you haven't been exposed to something you are unlikely to be allergic to it.

Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)

#62

Post by platform »

mikekchar wrote: post #37
fyfy18 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of a tangent, but in Japan what's the situation with taking time off work if you are ill and sick pay?

I can only give you my experience (working as a civil servant, teaching English in a public high school). People generally have 20 days of vacation and 20 days of sick leave per year. You can get more sick leave if there is a good reason (i.e. if you are hospitalised), but at some point I think disability kicks in. I can tell you (since I now have my own company) that disability insurance is private, so the details w…

Thank you for sharing your experience.

It seems like Japan would benefit greatly from telecommuting. (it is a developed economy with well built telecommunication infrastructure, affinity for robotics/etc).

is there such a trend in that country?

Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)

#63

Post by coldtea »

Veen wrote: post #44
coldtea wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The societal pressure on appearance is so high, that just going to the grocery shopping without makeup is seen a socially unacceptable. Well, "socially unacceptable" if you're superficial and want to be popular and trendy. I have a few Korean friends and they don't particularly care. So, it's as much "pressure" as wearing brand name clothes would be in the Valley in the 90s.

> if you're superficial and want to be popular and trendy You can be concerned about being popular and trendy without being superficial. Ignoring fashion, style, and appearance standards can hurt your life chances and your relationships with other people. In societies where popularity and trendiness signal and enhance status, it's rational to be concerned about them.

>You can be concerned about being popular and trendy without being superficial. Ignoring fashion, style, and appearance standards can hurt your life chances and your relationships with other people.

If your worried about your "life chances and your relationships with other people" based on fashion and style, then you're superficial, and those are superficial relations (and a superficial career).

Not caring about "fashion and style" doesn't mean you're some hobo style slob (which would indeed hurt your relations and life chances for non-superficial reasons, e.g. because you smell and wear shorts at the office).

Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)

#64

Post by chrischen »

fiblye wrote: post #15
resoluteteeth wrote: post #4

Surgical masks don't protect you against airborne viruses, but if you wear one when you have a cold it does help protect other people from viruses in your snot/water particles. The facts about this are fairly well known in Japan now (although there may still be people who wear masks in the misguided hope that they won't catch other people's colds despite), so it's not very accurate to try to imply that use of surgica…

And if ever you visit Japan, you’ll see a significant number of people pull down their masks to unleash their coughs and sneezes completely uncovered in a crowded area. Covering coughs and sneezes isn’t really a concept here, and when it’s done, it’s done with bare hands which most people don’t wash during their bathroom visits. People wear masks here during pollen season or handling dusty/dirty things, to indicate t…

That is not characteristic of why they wear masks. And at least a lot of other less crowded parts of Asia are just meme-ing Japn, as they do for a lot of other stuff as well.

I was on a short trip there and caught a cold, and an okder businessman gave me one of his masks because he saw I was struggling to contain my coughs with just my hands.

It gets very crowded in Tokyo, so these masks are essential during cold and flu season.

Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)

#65

Post by mikekchar »

platform wrote: post #62
mikekchar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only give you my experience (working as a civil servant, teaching English in a public high school). People generally have 20 days of vacation and 20 days of sick leave per year. You can get more sick leave if there is a good reason (i.e. if you are hospitalised), but at some point I think disability kicks in. I can tell you (since I now have my own company) that disability insurance is private, so the details w…

Thank you for sharing your experience. It seems like Japan would benefit greatly from telecommuting. (it is a developed economy with well built telecommunication infrastructure, affinity for robotics/etc). is there such a trend in that country?

I haven't heard of anything like that. I think it is inevitable eventually but it's really antithetical to the culture at the moment. Everything is done really cooperatively so the idea of being alone working at home would probably incite a few heart attacks :-)

What's really interesting to me on the opposite side is that I've never heard of pair programming in Japan. I really should go on the speaker circuit here because it seems like the perfect Japanese technique.

Anyway, if someone wants to start a risky startup for the Japanese market, some kind of software that enables collaborative work while telecommuting is probably necessary. It could probably make a lot of money eventually, but risky in the short term until something like that is accepted.

Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)

#66

Post by chongli »

resoluteteeth wrote: post #4

Surgical masks don't protect you against airborne viruses, but if you wear one when you have a cold it does help protect other people from viruses in your snot/water particles. The facts about this are fairly well known in Japan now (although there may still be people who wear masks in the misguided hope that they won't catch other people's colds despite), so it's not very accurate to try to imply that use of surgica…

Surgical masks don't protect you against airborne viruses

Maybe not, but they should be great at protecting you from tiny droplets of fluid (above a certain size) from coughing and sneezing. I would think that alone should cut down on the risk of getting sick.

Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)

#67

Post by C1sc0cat »

asutekku wrote: post #21

I’m living in japan and the thing I hear a lot (a japanese people told me this) is that they don’t wear the masks only out of courtesy. It’s also because not only they don’t want to get sick, but because they will lose holiday days if they don’t have doctor’s note. So just having a flu / slight fever is not sufficient reason to get the note.

I think you mean a Cold and not Flu they are quite different things

Re: Why Asians wear surgical masks in public (2014)

#69

Post by thisismyaccoun7 »

fiblye wrote: post #15
resoluteteeth wrote: post #4

Surgical masks don't protect you against airborne viruses, but if you wear one when you have a cold it does help protect other people from viruses in your snot/water particles. The facts about this are fairly well known in Japan now (although there may still be people who wear masks in the misguided hope that they won't catch other people's colds despite), so it's not very accurate to try to imply that use of surgica…

And if ever you visit Japan, you’ll see a significant number of people pull down their masks to unleash their coughs and sneezes completely uncovered in a crowded area. Covering coughs and sneezes isn’t really a concept here, and when it’s done, it’s done with bare hands which most people don’t wash during their bathroom visits. People wear masks here during pollen season or handling dusty/dirty things, to indicate t…

That's pretty interesting. I don't know anything about Japan really, but having lived in Korea, I can say with certainty that Koreans wear masks when they are sick to prevent spreading it to other people and not for decorative purpose. If you have even the slightest sniffle or cough and don't wear one, people are going to think negatively of you. I've never seen someone pull their mask down to cough or sneeze.

A more recent development is decorative designs, and that's been popularized a bit by kpop stars in music videos, but no one wears a mask in Korea in real life just for decoration. The only time outside that is when yellow sand is bad.

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