BY MICHAEL COLE

Travel anywhere around the Big Mango and you will see them. In offices, shopping malls, supermarkets, buses, trains, everywhere, surgical face masks are ‘in trend’.

Think of the advantages: tired of smiling at demanding customers, wearing lipstick or shaving? Want to hide that seu? Haven’t got time to wax that upper lip? Don’t want anyone to recognise you with your new gatoey gik? Just put on a surgical mask. It’s like one of those drive-in curtain hotels for your face.

They can also be a great fashion accessory. Go sanook and choose the cartoons or select one to match your handbag and shoes. I think they are going to be huge this season. I almost feel naked without one.

But before you invest in one to stop yourself dying from Flu-Mhu 2009 let’s take a little reality check.

Sadly, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), last week the world-wide death toll from Swine-flu 2009 hit 816. This is a terrible tragedy for those people and their families. However ‘normal’ seasonal influenza kills many more every year. For example in the USA alone, the American Medical Association (AMA) estimates on average 36,000 people die of seasonal flu-related causes every year.

Just to add a little more perspective: every year, malaria causes nearly one million deaths, mostly among children under 5 years; and there are 9 million new cases of Tuberculosis (TB) and 1.5 million deaths from TB each year. If you are talking about real pandemics, then HIV/AIDS has killed more than 25 million people worldwide, about 35 million people are currently living with HIV and last year approximately 2.5 million people were newly infected with the virus.

So, if you really want to save your life use a condom, a mosquito net and a get TB shot.

But if you want to look cool and lip-synch obscenities at your boss (or that guy who keeps staring at you on the train) without them knowing, then get one of those really cool masks.