A letter was sent home from the Minister of Health through the schools about H1N1. Everthing seemed to make sense until I got to this part.
Does this make any sense to anyone? If they are trying to avoid a large outbreak should they not be informing parents that someone in the school has it? Maybe it’s just me, but I am having a hard time wrapping my head around it.
I doubt they meant that “even if every other child in your kid’s class had it, we wouldn’t tell you” as much as “we are not going to make routine announcements to uninvolved people so that every crank parent turned amateur epidemiologist can clog our phone lines demanding that we close down little Timmy’s because some night janitor across the city got the flu.”
You, no doubt are reasonably informed about the subject. But there are countless weirdos who think that H1N1 is the first sign on the apocalypse, etc. And there are tons of control freaks who want nothing more than to spend the next week sending countless emails, phone calls, petitions, etc. demanding that all the crossing guards wear face masks, or whatever loony idea they might have. There are a lot of unstable people out there just looking for a place to unleash their latent crazy. This stuff can quickly become a huge headache and divert resources away from the places where they are needed.
So, they no doubt will continue to closely monitor the situation, take what steps are needed, and try to keep it between the people who actually need to take action or have some reason to be concerned.
Sounds reasonable, unfortunately I have some control freak in me and prefer to be kept in the loop. I just read it as a possibility that if ten or twenty kids in the school have it that they will not let the parents know, I think I would prefer to know so I can make somewhat informed decisions. Keep in mind that where I live is semi rural with less than 20,000 people and only 500 students at the local elementary school.
Around here, the media-fed Swine! Flu! Outbreak! Of! 2009! mania has died off entirely.
Two weeks ago, I had the flu. My neighbor is an ICU nurse and believes it was H1N1 that I had, based on the symptoms and the time of year - still a bit too early for normal flu. My doctor also believes it was H1N1 without seeing me. No testing, no reporting. Just “Drink lots of liquids*, get lots of rest, stay home, expect to feel rotten for at least a week.”
So we did just that. We vigorously avoided going anywhere near some friends who are school teachers, lest we unwittingly turn them into vectors and aside from that, we took the Tamiflu, stayed curled up either in front of the TV or flat out in bed, drank juice and water by the gallon, felt like lukewarm crap and eventually, it passed.
When I was a kid, when someone got the mumps or measles or chicken pox, a note would go out to every parent, “Dear Parent, a child in “Mark” class has been taken ill with chicken pox. Please act accordingly to insure your child is appropriately protected.”
It was worded “appropriately protected” to mean keep him out of school or get him vaccinated or whatever depending on the illness.
But I guess with the Swine Flu (it’ll always be the Swine flu to me :)) it’s harder to diagnose than the mumps as you could have another type of flu or even just a bad cold and mistake it.