One, Two, and the Germs Flew!

by Pa Rock
Health Nut

The Air Force hospital where I work had its annual "Safety Day" this week. The hospital employees - military and civilian - spent the morning going through various stations and learning a variety of things from how to get handicapped individuals downstairs in the event of an emergency to the proper method for sneezing. Yes, there is a curriculum outlining the best way to sneeze!

The current best standard is to sneeze into your sleeve. By doing that, your little germies get caught in the fabric where they hopefully die. The second best method is to sneeze into a tissue and then throw the tissue away. It is definitely not cool to hang onto the tissue for multiple uses! (Remember the old days when little boys used to carry handkerchiefs that would get cemented into a wad with a day or a week's accumulation of green winter snot? No wonder we were always sick!

One of the things we learned at Safety Day is that Swine Flu has already arrived in the Valley of Hell. Unfortunately the Swine Flu shots - that may or may not work - have not arrived. There was lots of instruction about the necessity of washing hands any time they come into contact with items that could carry germs - bathroom fixtures, door knobs, other people's hands, etc.

That was Tuesday. On Wednesday morning I was driving through McDonald's for my ritual morning breakfast - a sausage egg McMuffin that I share with Bob the Grackle, and a large, unsweet iced tea - when I observed a young crew kid sneeze directly into a cup of coffee that he had just poured. I assumed he would do the right thing and dump it out, but instead he deftly fitted the cup of coffee with a lid. That left me with an ethical dilemma: should I point out the error of his ways, hold up traffic in order to fuss, embarrass the kid, and maybe put his job in jeopardy, or should I drive on and hope the guy in the next car had a good immune system. And if I did do the right thing, would that same kid develop his own ritual of spitting on my sandwich, or worse, every morning?

I took the coward's way out, and am suffering shame for that decision. But the incident did make me realize how vulnerable we all are to the vagaries and moods of people working in the food industry. The swine flu is here, its dangerous, and we all need to be very, very careful. This would probably be an excellent time to go back to the old standard of packing a lunch!

H1N1, Swine, or Mexican?

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

I received a shot for Swine Flu back in 1976 when Jerry Ford was President, and it must have worked because I never caught the dreaded and deadly malady. It was a huge deal then. Poor Ford was trying so hard to be relevant while Chevy Chase did skits pretending to be the bumbling President tripping and falling over everything in sight. Simpler days, those.

Actually the Swine Flue never materialized and the national drill of everyone rushing out to get shots in school houses and armories all over America served as yet one more reminder of just what a goof poor President Ford really was. Lyndon Johnson had commented once when Jerry Ford was a member of Congress, that he had played too much football without a helmet.

So now, thirty-three years later, the Swine Flue finally arrives. Arizona had its first reported case today, It is somewhat remarkable that it took so long to get here considering the long border that Arizona shares with Mexico - the country where the current outbreak originated. As of this evening ninety-some cases had been reported in a total of ten U.S. states, and there had been one death in this country - a toddler in Texas who had just arrived from Mexico.

There are also about a dozen countries where the Swine Flu has made a beachhead, most tracing its origins back to people who had been in Mexico. There are a few cases in Israel, and the Jews, who don't eat pork, are somewhat reluctant to call it Swine Flu. One Israeli politician suggested that it be referred to as Mexican Flu. Needless to say, that recommendation did not endear the state of Israel to Mexico.

American officials, to include President Obama, have today started referring to the flu by its scientific shorthand: the H1N1 Virus. I noticed that most of the newscasters have begun to use that label as well. I guess that I can understand that. After all, who would want to succumb to a flu named for a pig?

Good friend Xobekim forwarded a description of the symptoms. They involve a sudden urge to eat raw corn and roll in the mud!

'Nuff said.