Okay, so here’s a blog about something I hope you never have to deal with. The Salem Witch Trial aspect of the Swine flu. And you thought those nice Puritans in Salem were hysterical. Swine Flu. The potential pandemic or as I like to call it THE PIGDEMIC. Or the Pig Panic. Or how bout, It’s Just A Slow News Week? Here’s the deal. My sister and her baby went to Mexico for a conference. You know where this is going. Had fun. Drank cool drinks on the beach, ate okay Mexican food and thought they had really dodged a Mexican bullet when they experienced no gastrointestinal distress. Wrong. Big time. Came home. Got respiratory infections. Spent lots of time with us because my sister is a single parent, while baby spewed boogers and received love. Read hysterical newspapers on Sunday. Called doctor. And life as we knew it ended. All of us, healthy or not, and, trust me, we were all really, really healthy except my mild case of PMS and the jury is still out on whether that counts as illness, ended up in the vortex of swine flu. Haz-mat teams, being forbidden from attending school due to contact with possibly infected person and the hysteria that might result should other parents discover that we had handled a baby who’d been to Mexico and had a cold. So my sister and I have spent the last few days trying to entertain three healthy boys and a baby recovering from a cold without having any other human contact or going to any other public place. It’s been great. I’m thinking of asking the Haz-mat teams to come back just to mediate fights.
Here’s what I think. I was a longtime member of “The Media”. I was pretty successful in my day. I worked with fine journalists like Charles Kuralt and Connie Chung and then I ended up on TV trying to continue their tradition. I’m not blaming folks like them. But I do think the hysteria starts with the newsfolk and has much to do with what else is going on in the world. For instance, remember West Nile Virus. Probably just barely. Every year we would hear about the deadly West Nile Virus and there would be spraying of toxic chemicals, predicted horrible death possibilities and terror when you found a dead bird in your gutter. No more flinging of dead birds into the trash after closely examining them just out of macabre interest and fascination with being up close to such a pretty thing, even dead, when they are usually in the sky. No, suddenly every dead bird was an issue for the health department, even those with cat fang marks in their heads. You just never know, people would say. And do YOU want to die of West Nile? And then 9/11 happened. Now September Eleventhwas real news. Deeply tragic real news. News that required all news people work long hours on a REAL story that, like all REAL news stories, was terrifying and full of actual grief. And you know what’s funny? Since 9/11 we have never heard another story about West Nile. Or at least I haven’t. My friend Gina’s son is a teenager and like all teenaged boys, he had a really naughty idea one day. He and some friends discovered a dead opossum while walking home from school. Like any teenage boy I can think of, they decided it would be hysterically funny to hang the dead possum by it’s tail from an overpass onto the roadway below. I know. Stupid. But not surprising from a demographic who’s only goal in life is to have some sort of skin to skin contact with a teenaged girl, fart the loudest in their posse, preferably not in front of the teenaged girl, and eat as much as can possibly be consumed by any human, ideally from a mixing bowl. Yes, a few cars hit the poor departed possum frozen in full rigor mortis, screeched to a stop, one broke a side mirror. Chaos, but no one was hurt. The kids were stunned at the pandemonium they caused and ran but because they were decent kids, came back to make sure everything was okay. Got arrested. Cops laughed. They were headed for a slap on the hand BUT the woman who’s side mirror they had lopped off was a reporter for a local news station and it was a VEEERRRRYYYY slow news period. So what do you think happened? Well, by the next morning, news organizations AROUND THE WORLD were reporting a roving band of teenage boys who had executed an innocent(if anything that bizarre looking can ever truly be innocent)opossum and thrown it, like the now infamous frozen turkey incident, at unsuspecting cars, hoping to do grievous harm to both the drivers and the poor possum. The family got hate mail, animal rights people demanded death for the teens, the judge, succumbing to public pressure hit the kids with a felony. That they will have for the rest of their lives.
Slow news days are going to ruin our lives. And hysteria will kill you faster than swine flu or West Nile. Last year I had an unsettling event in my life. After a series of routine tests, a very young and somewhat hysterical doctor diagnosed me with a heart condition that would kill me quickly and ruin my life before it did. Let’s just say I became somewhat hysterical, the doctors were somewhat hysterical, my normally level headed spouse became hysterical, my sister and her angrily divorcing spouse became, for just my period of near death, remarkably civil and hysterical, my friends, hysterical, my parents, hysterical. Even the pets seemed off. There was so much hysteria every where that I looked that I filled a prescription for Xanax and never actually took one. Just carried it with my in case the hysteria threatened to overwhelm. But in the midst of it all, two of my friends, both gifted doctors, didn’t display one bit of hysteria and spent a lot of time on the phone with me talking me off ledges until we could find the right doctor to help me. We did find her (just so you know, her name is Evelyn Horn and she is a spectacular cardiologist at Weill Cornell). She sat me down in her office and spent half an hour on my chest with her stethescope after which she looked up and said something like this…”Okay, you are not dying. You’ve got a problem but I think as long as we take care of you properly, you can live to be 102.” And I was no longer hysterical. I think that period of time shaved years off my 102 life span and I’ll probably only make it to 95 but it also taught me a really important lesson. Hysteria is never helpful. It’s just hysterical.
We need to all calm down. Deep breaths. Be practical but not fearful. Perhaps always on alert for opossums hanging from overpasses and never drinking the water in Mexico (c’mon, it’s just common sense) but other than that, go back to looking at dead birds in your yard, eat all the pork you feel like and don’t be afraid just because the media tells you to. My friend Alanna Levine, a lovely, smart and most importantly CALM, doctor who is all over TV all the time (www.alannalevinemd
.com) came up with a few pointers for getting through this all with practicality. Here they are:
From: Alanna Levine <alannalevine@me.com>
Date: May 1, 2009 11:17:02 AM EDT
To: Jen White <jen1515@verizon.net>
Subject: Swine Story-let me know if you want more or different info…xox
General Swine Flu Facts:
1. The information is changing hour to hour so what is true now, may not be true tomorrow-check www.cdc.gov for the latest information.
2. There is a big difference between a virus that is very contagious (spreads easily) and a virulent (causes severe disease) one. On a personal level, I would be more concerned with virulence.
3. Even if you received a flu shot/mist this year, you will not be protected against swine flu-the CDC is developing a different vaccine for H1N1 virus.
4. H1N1 virus is responsive to antiviral drugs like Tamiflu and Relenza.
What should we as individuals do?
1. Use common sense! Think of it like seasonal flu and act in the same way you would during flu season.
2. Wash you hands frequently-hand sanitizer is okay if you don’t have access to water.
3. Eat well and get enough sleep.
4. Encourage people who don’t feel well to stay home.
5. Sneeze or cough into a tissue and wash hands afterwards.
6. In work and school environments, clean frequently touched surfaces (like you ordinarily should)-viruses can live for 2 hours or longer on surfaces.
7. Do NOT take anti-viral medication prophylactically unless you have a special circumstance and it’s after consultation with your physician.
8. Avoid non-essential travel to Mexico.
I’m going to add that I’m unclear what any essential travel to Mexico might be. But Alanna forgot the most important tip of all. DO NOT READ A NEWSPAPER OR WATCH TV UNTIL I TELL YOU THAT THE SWINE FLU TERRORIZING IS OVER. And I read the papers this morning. I think they’re getting bored and by next week we’ll be on to something else.
