spritopias flu

I think the Swine Flu should have been called something else.  I think it would have been much more popular an illness if it had been named after something less popular than the blessed beast who brings us bacon.  I think more people would have met this disease with scorn if they had just called it spinach flu or broccoli flu; Casey would like it to be called the corn flu.  We could have named it after an animal that isn’t as cute or useful as pigs are, or can be.  Would anyone have objected to it being called the rat flu or the ferret flu?  They should have tacked on “guinea” to pig flu and everyone would have been agreeable.

I think they should have called it the donkey flu, because everyone around me has been acting like a jackass.  There are people who are incredibly nonchalant about any public health risk that they impose upon the rest of us and then there are people who overreact.  There are people who have always and will always just cough at you without covering up.  I am doing that currently so we’ll turn the air conditioning on so that I’m not assaulted by my allergies while I sleep.  Then there are people who’ve broken out their SARS masks from back-in-the-day and are wearing them to work and McDonald’s. 

I love the opportunity to constantly, constantly wash my hands.  I have washed my hands several times before even getting to this paragraph.  I am enjoying using hand-sanitizing lotions even if that is actually a dangerous practice.  I wash my hands after using the lotions as well because you’ve killed the germs but they’re still on your hands and I have no proof they’re dead so I need to wash them off my hands.  Also, people are not looking at me like a freak when I wash my hands all the time or at least I am not as paranoid about it.  These are amazing silver linings for me. 

There are some other silver linings to the cloud of the swine flu.  We cannot blame this on George W. Bush or the Republican Party or on Barack Obama and the Democrats.  If it could be linked intelligently to the Republicans or if there were a witty way to link this to the twenty-third letter I would have already done it.  We’ve fallen into the bad habit of knee-jerk blaming he-who-falls-between-v-and-x and his retinue for everything instead of trying to learn a lesson from the event.  This also gives us good practice for what we might and might not do when something like this happens again, if we survive this epidemic and don’t all die.  I had a third thing because that’s how I roll by I forgot it while I was washing my hands.  

Comments

[Kathy]

One of the things I love most about my classroom is the sink/drinking fountain combo. I can wash my damn hands whenever I feel like it, and I feel like it a lot.

I brought the Clorox disinfectant wipes, broke out the good hand sanitizer for myself (smells like green apple, the kids would eat it) and the cheap stuff for my students. We'll beat this thing, and then celebrate with a ribs and bacon cook-out. That'll show those nasty swines!

[Margaret]

If one person gets swine flu at school, we have to close down for 7 days. I'm wondering who the first kid will be to claim to have it. Or perhaps it will be a teacher??