People have been really worked up about the recent increase in swine flu cases all over the world, especially in Australia and U.K. In fact, the most recent news about the sad death of a patient in Scotland has quite a few folks on edge. Well, while most of us have been focused on travel warnings, hospital hygiene and whatnot, Japan has gone one step ahead of everyone ... again!

The Japanese government has signed up a major service provider to perform an interesting experiment. The company, Softbank, will be handing out cellphones to a select number of students in a school. Then they are going to tag the phones of certain students; think of them as people sick with a highly infectious virus. Next, the company will check out their movements, folks they communicate with and other such details. I am assuming that  the point is to calculate the rate of infection and also to find means to contain the virus through the findings of this research.

Read the full details about this experiment here.

Isn't this a rather rational way of dealing with the threat of a pandemic? Most of us are fretting about folks not washing hands and sneezing without covering your nose (Eww!). It has brought out the worst in some of us with them jabbing angry fingers at immigration procedures. Shouldn't the rest of the world be a bit more practical and thus, thinking of ways like this? Coming up with better disaster management plans than blacklisting select countries at major airports? The point is, everyone is worried about preventative measures; that's all good and well but you are also hoping someone out has a contingency plan for worst case scenarios as well.

So far, I am intrigued by this experiment. It will be put in place a few months from now. The results will be quite interesting. I must admit I am curious about social factors as well. What are the parents and kids going to be like? Paranoid about other kids? Suspicious of each other? I suppose if it is simply an experiment, it will be hard to bring out reactions that will mirror human emotion resulting from an actual pandemic.