Let’s not panic over Swine Flu

 

 

I feel we are all part of some surreal, futuristic movie. It’s hard for me to fathom the craziness that has been caused by the H1N1 virus (commonly known as Swine Flu). It is even harder for me to comprehend the resulting school and activity closures that have taken place all over Michigan and the United States.

Our top headline last week read, SCHOOLS CLOSE AS FLU FEARS MOUNT. This is the first time I can remember schools closing for something other than weather-related (or a boiler down). When Mount Pleasant schools experienced a 26% absentee rate they shut down all schools in the district. Ditto East Jordan and Evart. Downstate school districts, right and left, were closing. Heck Hillsdale closed their schools for a week.

While schools were closing, hospitals were restricting visitors and asking all that entered wear masks. Again, I refer to the Detroit area, but one friend told me he couldn’t believe a survey of emergency rooms, that indicated they were all overflowing with desperate individuals seeking relief for their flu-like ills.

All the while, news outlets have been reporting, day after day, that vaccine manufacturers are hopelessly behind in producing the Swine Flu vaccine. These manufacturers, who promised the federal government, and therefore you and I, that they would have 250,000,000 vaccines by the end of the year, won’t even come close to fulfilling that promise.

In many areas, vaccine shots are limited to potentially high risk people- those old, young and sick. Heck, even President Obama, isn’t getting the shot- preferring to allow his vaccine to be administered to another.

My son, age 8, and his mother, stood in line at a makeshift area on the campus of Oakland Community College, to receive their Swine Flu shot. Luckily a relative got out of bed before daylight on Saturday morning to get a good spot in the line. He was number 60. By the time my son arrived, there were 3,512 people in line behind them.

I’ve witnessed long lines for AMERICAN IDOL and hot concert tickets, but to receive a poke in the arm. I’m aghast! What is happening to our once safe, happy world.

Nostradamus wrote that the world will end in 2012. The Mayans have also predicted that civilization will end in the winter of 2012. The Holy Bible claims a great plague will take over the Earth, and two-thirds of the world’s population will be wiped out.

Now, I’m not a believer in Nostradamus’s rants or the Mayans prophecies. Both have been right on a number of things, but the world ending in 2012, NO WAY! Neither, am I in a panic over H1N1. If we all use common sense, I don’t see this new flu strain to be a big deal.

Common sense means washing hands frequently, covering your mouth when you cough, avoid contact with sick people and staying home when you are ill. Flu is flu, and if you take the same precaution and medications, the more severe H1N1, wont’ be a big deal.