I’ve tried to keep out of the whole swine flu (now H1N1) hysteria, but this morning I heard something that made me extremely nervous. Bear in mind that I’m a serious hypochondriac, and am terrified of weird diseases and getting sick and dying. It scares me to no end to hear people panicking on the news and all around me, but I’ve been fairly level-headed so far. I even kept my cool when a kid next to me in the dining hall was talking about how he got back from Mexico two days ago. And I didn’t start wearing a mask when people were talking about swine flu in Vernon (30 minutes from UConn).
"Ok, if you live here, here, here, here or here, you're going to die. Probably."
But this morning my roommate Ari called me to tell me that there was a confirmed case in Stratford, the hometown of my roommate Marcella, who is there right now. I called Marcella to tell her the horrifying news, but to my surprise she had already known and wasn’t afraid. “Can you wear a mask, just to make me feel better,” I pleaded. She laughed and told me it was fine.
THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.
And on a certain level, I know it’s fine. But I can’t get the idea out of my head that if I get this flu, I’m going to die. I know many people feel the same way, which is why there’s such a panic. But out of the hundreds of people who have the flu now, I don’t think the percentage of death is terribly high; it’s a killer virus in the sense that pneumonia can kill you, though mostly the elderly and young children die from it, or those with weakened immune systems.
Still, I’m afraid. I keep having dreams of quarantines, zombies wandering the streets and pigs running around biting people. I’ve been drinking Emergen-C exclusively and trying to avoid public places. Even now I have a headache and I’m starting to worry it could be the harbinger of illness.
The near future.
Should I be worrying this much? Of course not. But I blame the media for my overreaction. If you’re going to constantly report on a story about a virus spreading across the United States, you have to be prepared for stirring up some chaos. I’m guessing in the coming weeks the news will be reporting that swine flu isn’t as deadly as first thought, and things will go back to normal. People will forget, as they did with avian flu, SARS, malaria, yellow fever. It will become a thing of the past, though it will still exist as a threat. For now, though, I reserve the right to worry. It’s just in my blood.
Robin
internet interest 