This week we get to travel the world with no passports or luggage. Our adventure begins in Brest, France, and then we travel back in time to Hong Kong during the SARs epidemic. Our travel guide is the wonderful Vera Bin San who is a marine biologist and a friend of Amy’s. P-Traps, Masks, and the French Police somehow make it into this conversation.
Check out Vera on her own YouTube Channel.
Transcript
Robert Osborne:
You’re listening to The Outfall. This is Robert. This week, we get to travel the world with no passports or luggage. Our adventure begins in Brest, France, and then we travel to Hong Kong. Our travel guide is a friend of Amy’s but soon became a friend to both David and me.
Vera Bin San:
It’s a city called Brest, B-R-E-S-T. And it does look like the breast of France. I’m a marine scientist.
Amy Anderson:
Hi, this is Amy. I met Vera when we were postdocs at Clemson. And what I love about her is her openness and her candor. And even though she’s often halfway around the world, we’ve managed to stay in touch. And as we’ve been talking lately, what has really struck me are the commonalities of what we’re experiencing. And yet some differences as the whole world is experiencing this pandemic in similar and yet often very different ways.
Vera Bin San:
France, they allow everyone to go out once a day and we have to fill out a paper. It’s like a declaration form. You don’t have to have someone to authorize you to go outside, but you’re authorizing yourself to go outside and you have to have that paper. So if a policeman see you on the streets and they ask about this form and you don’t have it, then they can give you a fine of…
Robert Osborne:
Really?
Vera Bin San:
…59 euros. Yes. And in the beginning, people think, “Oh, if I’m rich, I can be free.” But no, now they’re starting to put people to jail if you go out for two to three times [inaudible 00:00:01:30]. I heard that from my advisor and they are taking this seriously. And they now limiting the exercise time for one hour per day. You can’t be out there…
Robert Osborne:
Really?
Vera Bin San:
…more than one hour. Yeah. You have to say in the form saying at what time and what day that I signed this form and when the policemen find you and they said, “Oh, hey, this is three hours after you wrote this,” then you can be fined as well.
Amy Anderson:
Wow.
Vera Bin San:
It’s now being more strict. I don’t know how Italy does it, but yeah, they have this new rule implemented.
Robert Osborne:
So what makes Vera extra special? Well, for one thing, she lived through the SARS epidemic in Hong Kong. In the spring of 2003, the SARS virus spread throughout the city infecting over 1700 people and killing nearly 300 people.
Vera Bin San:
When we had the outbreak in Hong Kong, lots of people died. And also we have all this knowledge on how it can spread, not only with a human contact, if we live in a high rise in apartment, we all live in apartment, we somehow figure out that the virus can get through the pipes, drainage pipes. So if there is some dried up pipes between the buildings, you can catch the virus from your neighbors. And there were actually hundreds of cases found in the same building.
Robert Osborne:
Let’s stop there. So typically bathroom drains have a U-shaped trap or P-trap that prevents fluids and odors from coming back up. You can go look under your kitchen sink and you’ll see one; however, at this apartment complex that Vera mentioned, officials found that traps did not work, which meant air could come up from the drain, contaminating the bathroom with droplets. So in essence, the sewer system in this complex became a pathway for the virus to spread.
Vera Bin San:
So everyone’s paranoid and we all know to wear mask. And even after 2003, even with the flu, I will have a mask on when I go to work just to prevent spreading the disease to anyone else. But in France, I remember when I got sick, I tried to ask for a mask in the nurse station, we have a nurse station in our institute. The nurse doesn’t know where it is. And she said, “We don’t have mask.” She just drives me away. And I said, “Oh, okay.” Because I was coughing a lot that day and I forgot it at home. And I just decided, because I cough so much on the bus, I felt like I should have the mask in it before I go into work. It was before the COVID pandemic. It was just during last winter. And she was, I remember she drive me away and I walked towards the lab for 10 step. And she came, ran up to me and said, “Hey, I found it. I found it.” And then she found this gigantic box of masks unopened, covered in dust.
Vera Bin San:
And she opened it and then just gave me, she almost gave me a whole box, but then she just gave me an envelope with several. And she said, “Oh, you want to take?” Yeah, I had to talk to her in French. But luckily the French word for mask was also mask, so [foreign language 00:04:56]. and then she was okay. I didn’t speak any French before I arrived with country. So I was really limited in talking to people, but it was funny realization that Europeans are not really used to having mask. And all my colleagues just stare at me that day when I come in with mask to work and they were like, “You are really, I don’t know, a good citizen of other people. You’re a really good person to not try to spread your disease.” I said, “Yeah, that’s our culture. You shouldn’t cough without a mask. Or you should cover your nose and mouth. That’s what we were taught in Hong Kong.” So I don’t know, the mask are, it takes some time to get used to, and it’s not the most comfortable.
Amy Anderson:
It’s a big cultural difference. It’s not anything that we’re used to. It’s foreign and we look at it as I don’t want to wear it because I’m going to look like I’m sick. When in reality, you’re protecting yourself and you’re protecting everyone else versus other places, it’s very much part of their culture and it just feels normal.
Robert Osborne:
So I’ve been trying to keep track of all the different things. I can’t keep track of all the different things, but I’m trying to notice the things that will be different after COVID-19 and you guys are making me realize that I think this may be one of them, whereas before COVID-19 wearing masks, when you’re sick and whatnot was pretty rare. But I think after COVID-19, it’ll probably be a lot more common. If you’re traveling and you know you have a cold, it’ll be more common to put a mask on and that’ll probably be a good thing for society in general.
Vera Bin San:
I would say so. That definitely was the lesson we learned as a Hong Konger going through SARS. Yeah. And this has become a cultural practice that when we are sick, we just wear a mask.
Amy Anderson:
Yeah.
Speaker 4:
Yeah. Yeah. So you guys have that in your culture now, and I’m curious to see if that will be, it’ll be that way in the US.
Amy Anderson:
Thank you, Vera. We really appreciate it. And I hope you have a lovely evening and hope we didn’t keep you up too late.
Robert Osborne:
We have fun producing these weekly dispatches. It’s made the world a bit smaller for all of us, and that’s a good thing. We have more dispatches coming up. Send us a note if you want to join us sometime, we’d love to have you. However, next week we have our first story episode for season two, about the coronavirus in wastewater. It’s going to be good. Stay well.
