Someone had sex with a pig.
Or something like that - I don’t really know. However it started, the swine flu is spreading across the nation, infecting people’s bodies and minds. Literally an entire generation will look back on this era as the era of the H1N1 scare, much like the generation during the Cold War remembers the threat of a nuclear bomb. Too extreme a comparison? I beg to differ.
The first things you see when you walk into my local Walgreens are air masks and hand sanitizer (tissues are on a lower shelf - for the unfortunates who are already infected.) Students are avoiding lecture halls with more than 300 people. Entire dormitory floors are going into quarantine.
Let me tell you a story. There is a girl - I’ll call her Penny - who is still socially inept because she contracted the virus the second week of school. People literally ran down the hallway away from her when she left her room to go to the bathroom. For weeks after she was no longer contagious, one particular individual sanitized everything she touched, covered his mouth when he passed her on the street, and still refuses to enter her room. Poor Penny.
About a month after I had started school, I got an invite to Skype with one of my friends who stayed in my hometown. The first thing he asks? If I’m infected yet. Apparently rumor was spreading around the state that Cal had an outbreak of the virus. So instead of talking about my new life and crazy college experiences, I spent half an hour convincing him I was healthy.
Tragedy hit when I actually did get sick. I spent three days with a runny nose and sore throat fervently praying that I would not get a fever - the tell tale sign of the swine flu. My floormates wanted daily updates as to my health status - they were personally affected if it turned out I did have the flu. I was popping Vitamin C pills like candy. I had my parents so freaked out that my mom turned to the online community for emotional support: her Facebook status read “Worried about my daughter not feeling well. Wishing I was there to be with her.”
I never did get the flu. I fully recovered in less than a week. However the near run-in with catastrophe did take a toll on my emotional stability. I was so close to becoming an outcast among my floormates and classmates it’s not even funny.
An international student on my floor was hiding the fact that the virus was on our campus from her parents. Her dad had told her she would be returning to China if the H1N1 showed up in Berkeley.
The one area that the virus has not seemed to penetrate is frat life. The first few weeks of college were filled with raging parties, with all their usual gusto, almost as if the epidemic had never happened. Germs don’t seem to be a problem when there are only twenty or so shot glasses to go around a party of two-hundred.
The swine flu (when acknowledged) is just another dramatic factor that plays into an already dramatic first year in the dorms. It’s something to write home to the family about (“I survived the swine flu!”) It’s a measure of strength if you survive. It’s a measure of courage (or stupidity) if you don’t sanitize your hands at every opportunity. Everyone has a personal story of how they or someone they know was personally affected by the virus (no doubt highly exaggerated stories, but some half-truths nonetheless.)
This epidemic is affecting my generation, making them wary not of nuclear power or warring nations, but of a tiny, invisible bug.
(Image from www.ury.york.ac.uk/ news/media/222-swine-flu.jpg )
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