The sure things in life are death and taxes. To that you can add: flu seasons. So the problems encountered by the Hong Kong government during the recent flu outbreak will recur, over and over again. The government was criticised for announcing the closure of primary schools and kindergartens in an apparently arbitrary and poorly timed manner.
Perhaps, instead, all the experts should get together and establish an indicator, be it a 5 per cent or 10 per cent absenteeism rate for students and staff because of flu, as the tipping point for schools to consider closing.
With the help of the Centre for Health Protection, each school could monitor its own situation during flu seasons. If the tipping point were reached at some schools, they would each be responsible for their own closure, with the government's blessing.
This way, only schools affected by the outbreak would be closed; the others could remain open, making it less disruptive to the lives of many parents.
Closing schools is like hoisting typhoon signals; no matter what you do and when you do it, there will always be criticism. With this idea, the government could at least be partially sheltered from all the blame.
Another alarming situation was the overcrowding in public hospitals. Occupancy rates of more than 100 per cent meant that bunk beds had to be placed in corridors and in between regular beds - a situation unacceptable at any time and appallingly dangerous during an infectious disease outbreak.