In April this year, Swine flu had made its mark. It was the illness everyone was talking about. By May, I felt that I’d heard mindless jabber enough about Swine flu.
The nation’s fear seemed legitimate when people were apparently dropping like flies in Mexico from the mysterious pandemic. Listening to NPR’s report on Swine flu in Central America, thoughts of Avian flu, West Nile virus and SARS came to mind and I shuddered to think what kind of symptoms swine flu held in store for us. Would this be the end of Mexico and the United States? Was I going to be taken out by the flu? This seemed serious. Europeans were urged to postpone all travels to the US and Mexico. In Egypt, an order was made to have all pigs slaughtered. I made a mental note to cut down on pork. I worried for the duration of the program until they listed the symptoms: headache, fever, sore throat, chills, fatigue... These sounded suspiciously like the symptoms of the regular flu. How were the two different, again?
The pre-recorded voice of the Berkeley Unified School District’s (BUSD) superintendent was fuzzy on the answering machine, but his message came through clearly: Swine flu was serious and had just hit the Berkeley schools.
There was worry at school among the students but that died down after the administration reassured the students that prom would not in fact get cancelled. Kids were almost excited to have swine flu come through the Berkeley school systems; since it had been declared an emergency pandemic by the World Health Organization, BUSD decided it would be best that a Berkeley school close down for the week if a case was reported. Still, this was California. This was Berkeley! We knew how to wash our hands and just in case, we knew 9-1-1! No big deal! Then Malcolm X Elementary closed for the week due to a break out of the Swine and everyone seemed to sort of hold their breaths. A week later, no one was dead and the superintendent’s voice called my house again, to remind me that Swine flu was still very serious, even though they were no longer implementing the schools-closing-down-for-Swine-flu rule.
At this point, I really didn’t care and amidst the warm weather, I forgot all about it.
Later, at the end of September, right before the beginning of open season for the flu virus, notices were being posted around the school bathrooms reminding co-eds to wash their hands and protect against the Swine! But this time they were friendly, cautious reminders: the tone of impending doom had been lifted from all Swine flu conversations.
Less than two weeks ago, I spent the whole weekend keeping my boyfriend company who had come home from college with Swine flu. The following Monday, I felt nothing “flu-like” and figured that maybe I’d dodged the dreaded Swine. Tuesday morning I had a fever of 99.1°. The next morning I was back to base temperature and feeling pretty good.
It really was no big deal.
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