Saturday, June 27, 2009

Swine Flu tsk tsk

More than anything, this “swine flu” or the A(H1N1) is making us really blunt and rude to each other. Automatically, we become racists to Americans and Mexicans. We worry so much about catching flu that we have thrown our etiquette out the window.

With the recent “scare” of The Flu, I have emailed an American acquaintance if he’s got A(H1N1), if he or his Mexican friend has gotten sick lately because I caught flu a few days after I met them. In short, I was accusing them of making me sick; but then again, I couldn’t risk it. I felt a tad bit of sarcasm from his reply, saying that if they were to get flu, they might have gotten it from us! Tsk.

During my birthday party. I invited some of my Couchsurfing friends over, including 2 foreign friends, a Spanish guy and an Australian guy. The next day, a local friend of mine caught flu and texted me if any of my foreign friend is sick or anything haha. I told them that both of my foreign friends are locals in the Philippines. Then she asked if any of them were out of the country recently? Then I remembered that my Aussie friend just came back from Thailand, so I had to clarify things with him to reassure my friend that she doesn’t have H1N1 or at least she didn't get it from my friends hehe.

Another friend of mine also shared a story with me. She recently went to Shanghai and travelled with an office mate. Let’s just say that her friend is a bit worried about catching the h1n1 herself and so it sort of dampened the mood of travelling. When they came back, the officemate caught a flu, and the first thing she told my friend the next day they saw each other after the trip was: I think I caught h1n1 in Shanghai; leaving my friend feeling as though she was being blamed for her sickness since she was the one who invited her to go travel. Tsk.

Recently I was listening to the radio, the DJ was saying that after the h1n1 scare, he found himself with flu and did self-quarantine just to make sure; so that made him miss work for a few days and when he finally got well with some sniffles left, he went back to work. He saw an office mate whom he’s never talked to before said to him “don’t talk to me!” while covering her mouth and nose!!! And he felt so discriminated, as though he’s someone who’s got leprosy or something, like the stories in the Bible; and so quickly he responded: NEVER DID, NEVER WILL. Tsk.

I remember a twitt by a Hollywood actor (I don’t remember who) that said: 20 deaths of swine flu and everyone’s wearing a mask, 20 years of AIDS and still not everyone’s using condom! Haha how true.

The thing is about h1n1 is that it’s curable; everyone’s so freaking scared about it only because the newspapers hype it up too much! Big newspapers has resorted to tabloid-like headlines just to make the boring news exciting (or scary): FIRST FLU DEATH REPORTED IN RP; then when you read the fine print, you find out the person who died had existing disease but her immune system was just weakened by the flu. Tsk.



Posting of photos of people in masks. Tsk.



The education board mandates suspension of 10 days classes if a case of h1n1 has been found, it’s just too much precaution for a curable disease, now all the students are delayed in their lesson plan, resorting to attending classes on Saturdays, extending their school year or shortening their vacation. Tsk.



Lighten up!

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