I had to cancel a trip to Germany this week due to illness. While nothing fatal, it was a pretty bad case of the flu, but it made me wonder what the chances are that if I had gotten on the airplane, I would have been denied entry into Germany if I arrved sick. Has anyone had any experience with this?

I know a while back during the SARS outbreak, when I traveled through Narita, they had body temperature scanners going and checked all of the arrivals, however I never actually saw anyone stopped and once the outbreak was over, the scanners also vanished.

They've still got the scanners in Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou, China. I'm sure other places, as well. Considering that there were always a half dozen agents (or whatever) stationed at the scanners in HKG, I'm sure that they have no trouble stopping people with fevers.

I was denied exit from PVG about 2 years ago because I had a fever. Actually, the scanner let me pass, but I told the screening agent that I wasn't feeling well and they rejected my quarantine form. This exempted me from a $150 change fee, though I really wish I hadn't had to go all the way out to the airport to plead my case (I showed up in the NW office with the same fever a day earlier and they gave me no love.)

The moral is, unless you genuinely believe yourself to be a public health hazard, never volunteer any information about minor ailments.

It seems like every time I fly now, someone behind me or next to me has a hacking cough. Are there any masks available on the market that work reasonably well at stopping airborne viruses?

We were in Guangzhou on a day trip from Hong Kong back in March. My partner came down with the flu and had a super-high fever. I could feel the heat radiating off of him. He was in pretty bad shape.

We went to the train station early and sat around for about two hours before our train doing nothing except loading him up with Advil to help bring down the fever. Amazingly, the fever broke maybe 10 minutes before we were supposed to board our train (you have to go through the scanners to leave China, as well), and we made it through the checkpoint back in Hong Kong. The fever came back as soon as we got back to our hotel in HKG. That short reprieve was clutch. Getting quarantined in mainland China would have been a nightmare.

A high quality surgical mask (not those cheap masks they sell for construction workers) will help reasonably well with some viruses and bacteria.

See this article for more info:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2081235/