1. H1N1 virus is highly contagious
2. It escalated during Greek Rush Week.
Anyone who has any kind of experience with Greek Week will understand what I'm talking about. It consists of fraternity and sorority applicants running from one fraternity or sorority house to another all week, mingling in dense crowds of students in a frenzied rush (hence, "rush week"), trying to network with as many people and Greek houses as possible.
Also, the university Food Services is entirely staffed by students. While there are strict sanitary requirements for the Food Services staff, they nevertheless come in contact with thousands of students every day. A person with the flu is often infectious before he or she shows symptoms. Therefore, easy transmission in a dense population, often by people who don't even know they have the flu--yet.
Of course, as soon as I heard the flu had appeared on campus, I sent a care package to the Alien Child, consisting of hand sanitizing gel, a thermometer, ibuprofen, Tylenol, herbal teas (Traditional Medicinal's Breathe Easy and Organic Echinacea), a bar of homemade soap, and a list of first-aid items all households should have and that he should buy immediately, which I'm pretty sure he does not have, as he is in his 20s and therefore thinks he is invincible. I also enclosed a pair of jeans and homemade kosher pickles, not that including these particular items will keep him from disease, but it can't hurt.
Even if he doesn't get swine flu, perhaps his roommates or his girlfriend might, so it may all come in handy anyway. Also, it's not as if he hasn't intervened in more-than-I-feel-comfortable-with medical emergencies already in the course of his college career, and he should be prepared with some kind of first-aid kit. If he's going to keep going to people's rescue, he needs to have items at hand with which to rescue them.
The Alien Child assures me--with that youthful I-am-immortal attitude--that he's fine, and it's not a big deal, and he has some friends who got that flu (tested and confirmed) and who were sick just three days, max. Besides, he's healthy, eating right, and having a lot of fun working out in his karate class. But, thanks for the jeans and the pickles.
The hubby of course caught the news on the Internet and let me know about this freakish escalation of disease while we were watching a horror movie (anime--I don't recall the name, but it featured robotic sorcerers with humongous cannon-like machine guns against what looked like deformed and disease-ridden demons) on TV. This is not the best time to talk about swine flu, because the inevitable comes to mind:
ATTACK OF THE SWINE FLU ZOMBIES!
"I'm picturing thousands of disease-ridden WSU students, stumbling their way to class, moaning and groaning in the way zombies do--" he said.
"Oh, please," I said, as the anime robot-sorcerer blasted away at a quivering jelly-like demon. But the image stuck, because hey, anime horror movies do have their effect.
"Derek and Amanda, the last surviving healthy humans fleeing for their lives--"
A movie poster started forming in my mind.
"I can see the movie poster already," said the hubby (did I ever mention we have been married long enough to read each others' minds?). "There they are, standing heroically atop College Hill, looking down on the ravaging hordes of zombie students clawing their way up, Derek with his nunchucks in hand, and--"
"Amanda with her submachine gun," I said, casting her into the "kick-ass gal with gun" role. "Ready to level the zombie populace in a last race toward survival."
"Yep, exactly."
We finished watching the anime horror flick, which had a strangely philosophical element to it, strange no doubt only to us, as we started watching it half way through.
"You think we should tell them we have featured them in a zombie movie poster?" I asked.
"Sure, why not?" the hubby said. "They're the heroes in the zombie movie poster. They can't object to that."
I will shortly supply a link to this blog post to my son. (Wicked grin.)
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