Flu tally: Programs close within schools
The most recent update from the Department of Education lists schools that are newly closed today and others that will reopen. It also itemizes certain specific programs — for disabled students, for example, or for kindergartners registered at one school who share a site with another school — which will close, while the schools that host them will remain open.
It’s not clear why decisions were made to close parts of specific buildings — and even less clear how flu viruses may be contained across arbitrary, human-imposed borders in a single physical structure. To this non-epidemiologist, closing part of a school seems baffling: the virus can’t discern which students it affects, or where they attend school, or which program is theirs. Viruses don’t ask questions; ask any parent with more than one child what happens when one gets sick.
If the contagion is sufficient to warrant protecting some of the students in the building, why not protect them all?
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The swine flu has become a major health concern not because of the severity of its symptoms, but rather, because it was the cause of the 1918 pandemic. Now, it is important to remember that the 1918 flu pandemic came in two phases, one with mild symptoms in the spring, followed by a deadly one in the fall. Those who caught the flu in the spring eventually survived the pandemic. So it seems to me like a bad idea to shut down entire schools at this stage, when the flu is not killing young and healthy individuals. Catching a mild flu now may even protect us from any deadly pandemics, if it were to ever happen in the near future.
Comment by don — May 28, 2009 @ 8:50 am