Zack Smith News Article: Swine Flu Drug stores, around the nation have sold out of surgical masks.Schools have been closed, sporting events called off, and doctors, hospitals and their phone lines, are jammed.Some of the extra paranoid confess to trying to avoid touching door handles, elevator buttons, and library books.With the number of people being affected by the swine flu rising to 100 people on Thursday, this may be a bigger problem than we anticipated.People are taking extra precautions and gearing up for the worse, maybe even a little overreaction, but still a serious problem.It’s begging to influence the daily lives of thousands of people, even in some states where the flu has yet to be found.In interviews taken around Salt Lake City, Utah some people said they faced a troubling, often internal balancing act over an illness no one seems to know much about.“In Cold Spring, Minn., on the same day a possible case of the flu was identified there, Diane McDonald and her two children had grown ill. Ms. McDonald, like thousands of others around the country, was panic-stricken, and called her doctor, who reassured her that her family’s symptoms did not match those of swine flu.”—New York Times. In some places, doctors said they have been overwhelmed with patients, some of whom insistently sought tests for the flu but had no cough or fever consistent with it.In another state 49 cases have been confirmed and 16 more were of suspect, some hospitals have reported healthy people returning from vacation in Mexico and going straight from the airport to the emergency room these “worried well” are what some health officials have labeled them as.The city’s public hospitals reported 100 to 135 more patients each day in each emergency room since the outbreak. A nation suddenly doused, it appeared, in antiseptic hand gel, the worry was nationwide. More than 300 schools closed around the country, sending more than 170,000 students home in 11 states, including the school district in Park City, Utah. As a child coughed at a department store, people threw stares at the unsuspecting child, then a scolding from a red-faced babysitter, “cover your mouth”. It may not even be as bad as people think this “swine flu” is. It may just diminish and die out within a couple of weeks.But with all the hype this is getting and the reassuring cases of it growing each day, some might even go out and by a bubble for their house armed with antiseptic gel and surgical masks to ward off this outbreak.Or some may go about living there lives normally without remorse. Either way, in the end, it’s in our nature.
News Article: Swine Flu
Drug stores, around the nation have sold out of surgical masks. Schools have been closed, sporting events called off, and doctors, hospitals and their phone lines, are jammed. Some of the extra paranoid confess to trying to avoid touching door handles, elevator buttons, and library books. With the number of people being affected by the swine flu rising to 100 people on Thursday, this may be a bigger problem than we anticipated. People are taking extra precautions and gearing up for the worse, maybe even a little overreaction, but still a serious problem. It’s begging to influence the daily lives of thousands of people, even in some states where the flu has yet to be found. In interviews taken around Salt Lake City, Utah some people said they faced a troubling, often internal balancing act over an illness no one seems to know much about. “In Cold Spring, Minn., on the same day a possible case of the flu was identified there, Diane McDonald and her two children had grown ill. Ms. McDonald, like thousands of others around the country, was panic-stricken, and called her doctor, who reassured her that her family’s symptoms did not match those of swine flu.”—New York Times.
In some places, doctors said they have been overwhelmed with patients, some of whom insistently sought tests for the flu but had no cough or fever consistent with it. In another state 49 cases have been confirmed and 16 more were of suspect, some hospitals have reported healthy people returning from vacation in Mexico and going straight from the airport to the emergency room these “worried well” are what some health officials have labeled them as. The city’s public hospitals reported 100 to 135 more patients each day in each emergency room since the outbreak.
A nation suddenly doused, it appeared, in antiseptic hand gel, the worry was nationwide. More than 300 schools closed around the country, sending more than 170,000 students home in 11 states, including the school district in Park City, Utah.
As a child coughed at a department store, people threw stares at the unsuspecting child, then a scolding from a red-faced babysitter, “cover your mouth”. It may not even be as bad as people think this “swine flu” is. It may just diminish and die out within a couple of weeks. But with all the hype this is getting and the reassuring cases of it growing each day, some might even go out and by a bubble for their house armed with antiseptic gel and surgical masks to ward off this outbreak. Or some may go about living there lives normally without remorse. Either way, in the end, it’s in our nature.