1 post from May 2009

    I am writing this blog while currently under the weather with flu-like symptoms, although I attribute my malady to yet another bout of strep throat which I acquired earlier in the semester. However, since last week during the few classes I actually got to teach in the state testing madness focused on how the current swine flu outbreaks were related to a topic we actually learned this year, exponential growth, my students will most likely shun me if I go into work coughing. I attempting to explain to them that the media operates on fear and that today's society is so reactionary and unable to cope with even a minor crisis that everything is being blown out of proportion. The Swine Flu is now a pandemic, but that connotation is misleading as it merely comments on the geography, not the severity of the outbreak. Also, it lacks many of the genetic factors which maid the 1918 flu so virulent.
     If I were an administrator, I would merely take precautions on this reactionary nature of today's society, because for all other intents and purposes this is the flu. I would try to assuage the fears of my community and send out an e-mail/letter informing parents of the symptoms and encouraging students to stay home if they believe they have some of the symptoms. My main focus would actually be on the fall semester, as this is when the 1918 flu mutated and became a much more virulent version. I would have contingency plans in place to deal with a real threat from a mutated strain, and a way to continue the education of students with a maximum emphasis on safety. Since the best remedy for fear is education, I would probably ask my biology and math teachers to explain how diseases work and spread during some of their first units next year in order to combat any hysteria from students. The only sporting event I would curtail heavily would probably be wrestling, unless our team or the opponents had confirmed cases. Other than that, it is the flu right now, nothing more, people simply don't have a resistance to it, so the sooner they get it and recover, the quicker than can put it out of their mind. Who am I as an administrator to stop the natural evolution of these events.