Swine Flu
When I told my mum I was sick, naturally she freaked out.
“Oh my god, have you been to the doctor? You have to go to the doctor. Haven’t you been watching the news? You could have swine flu. What do you mean the doctor didn’t take a blood sample? He should have taken a blood sample, the stupid man.”
After all, my mum is one of these people who is very concerned about the news. Sometimes, she’ll call me during the late hours of the evening:
“Did you see the news? There’s been an earthquake in China. Thousands of people have died. I feel so sorry for them. How must they be feeling?”
So obviously I knew that her finding out I was sick would be bad news for everyone involved - especially me - but it’s not exactly easy to hide when your eyes are watering, you’re constantly sneezing and your voice sounds like you swallowed a frog that’s scraping on the inside of your throat with regurgitated bark from a dead tree.
This swine flu business is exciting, though, isn’t it? I mean, it’s all over the news - even I thought I might have it. I had, after all, being sitting behind two Mormon from Utah. They may have coughed - I read somewhere that “a single cough could infect a room full of people”. Or they might have sneezed, or spoke, or breathed, no they were definitely breathing - maybe they were breathing with their mouths open.
The benefit of being sick and having a laptop is that you can do a lot browsing on the internet, and what I discovered about this whole swine flu business is that the New Zealand Herald isn’t actually reporting anything useful. I know what you’re thinking - when does it ever, right? But isn’t this a potential global pandemic? I might have it! I need information, I need to know what I should do, what my chances of survival are - people are dying! Damn those Mormon from Utah. The only information that the Herald can offer me is that those diagnosed with the swine flu from New Zealand are “recovering at home”. People are dying, a student is positively shocked by the diagnosis, airline passengers are held in transit, and people who have been diagnosed are “recovering at home”.
So I’m reading more about this flu that has my mum threatening to call and have some words with the doctor about how he should do his job. Turns out, there are only 7 swine-flu confirmed deaths, all of which have been in Mexico. Mexico, which has reported 152 fatalities in flu-like cases in recent days. There’s no information about the demographics of these deaths. Could these people afford homes, clean water, healthcare? I don’t know - all I know is that they died. It also turns out that the regular flu has killed thousands since January - but we don’t worry about this because it’s just the flu - the plain old regular seasonal flu that doesn’t deserve the hype of it’s ridiculously named cousins because it didn’t originate from a common animal in an exotic country.
Because let’s get serious: you can’t just tell your friends you have “the flu” - everyone has “the flu”. “Swine flu”, on the other hand, is far more exciting - doubly so since the word swine in itself is so humorous. Finally, kids worldwide can say swine without getting in trouble. And swine flu is all over the news, isn’t it?
So then I thought, shit, the reason I started reading about this is because I wanted to find out what I should do if I actually have swine flu. These news articles aren’t telling me anything. Maybe I’ll need to be hospitalized and stay in one of isolation beds covered with plastic and miss work for weeks!
Finally, I found the information I was looking for on the Word Health Organization website:
What should I do if I think I have swine influenza?
If you feel unwell, have high fever, cough and/or sore throat:
- Stay at home and keep away from work, school or crowds as much as possible.
- Rest and take plenty of fluids.
- Cover your mouth and nose with disposable tissues when coughing and sneezing and dispose of the used tissues properly.
- Wash your hands with soap and water frequently and thoroughly, especially after coughing or sneezing.
- Inform family and friends about your illness and seek help for household chores that require contact with other people such as shopping.
Basically, I should stay in bed, drink lots of water and tea, watch crappy daytime television, and if possible, get a maid. And when I’m feeling better, I should take a few codrals, suck it up and go back to work.
That doesn’t sound so exciting after all.
June 9th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
OMG ! this like totally helped me, I like freaked out last night after reading something about swine flu cases thirty something…50% NZers were going to get it.. And then I could not go to sleep - I was in bed, six hours straight - awake,, I even went to my mum’s room and told her that I was scared we were all going to get swine flu and die, and even my dad. They told me to forget about it, couldn’t, but I managed to diagnose myself with anxiety disorder Lols’ ! and I couldn’t get any sleep till about about 10 or 11 in the morning(missed out on school) but for only 1hour and a half - still I’m tired, I was constantly playing out the worst scenario of swine flu because so many people have died of SWINE FLU when really it was only 7 and that the others died of a normal flu.. After reading WHO it didnt quite settle me till I read this. I’m still worried but not as much as last night, and I tell you looking for swine flu on the internet makes it worse and the fact that i accidently clicked on to a site where everyone was depressed made me want to die - BUT i’m still alive can’t believe that only 7 people died of the scary swine flu.