Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Editorial: Swine flu not immediate concern
By Editorial Board
Daily Northwestern, Northwestern U.
May 19, 2009

At this point, the initial panic over swine flu has basically died down. While Northwestern did release an alert last week about the first confirmed student case, nothing shut down, only one summer study abroad program in Mexico has been canceled, and the university has stopped routinely testing everyone suffering from flu-like symptoms, as per CDC guidelines.

But we're not out of the woods. As Dr. Donald Misch, director of University Health services, points out, flus grow and change every year. That's why people revaccinate every season; the vaccine is aimed at a different strand every time.

So while the swine flu in its current state appears to have a lethality rate closer to the seasonal flu virus than, for instance, the deadly avian flu, and doesn't appear to be killing most of the people who contract it, that could eventually change.

When the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control first started talking about information coming out of Mexico concerning swine flu, it appeared that the lethality rate was much higher than it actually was. People panicked, bought surgical masks in cool colors, and decided to cancel summer plans to Mexico.

In the midst of all this, NU did a commendable job both of planning for the worst-case scenario and making sure students didn't panic. Misch said that administrators met and planned for potentially closing down the school, putting infected students in isolation, and distributing what antiviral medication they could get. They bought masks and alcohol-based hand sanitizer, and talked about who would feed the lab rats if they had to shut down the university.

What students received in their e-mail inboxes, though, was a cool letter telling us to observe basic health precautions and not go to class if we don't feel well. While we know that one student has the flu, we don't know where she lived or what her name is.

"One of the things we have to balance is notifying people of a significant risk while preserving as much privacy as possible," Misch said.

As the CDC continues to downgrade the threat levels of the pandemic (the word pandemic refers only to the disease's spread, not its dangerousness or potential lethality) the chance of NU needing to enact these procedures becomes increasingly small.

Unless the flu mutates into a much more lethal version, even if many more students are diagnosed with swine flu the university probably wouldn't shut down operations or cancel events like Dillo Day, Misch said. In any case, most students who aren't feeling well are unlikely to pay a $300 fee to get a definite diagnosis.

"The more it looks like seasonal flu, the more we should respond to it like seasonal flu," Misch said.

We hope the university will never have to enact the procedures determined in those early swine flu meetings. But as Misch pointed out, scientists have said that eventually another pandemic will hit, and the next one might not be so mild.

People have died from the swine flu, and more might do so. Like those who die from seasonal flus, it seems that most victims are the old, the young, or the sick. Next time this might not be the case.

The past few weeks have been scary for a lot of people, but maybe the stress on the system wasn't a bad thing. We now know where the fault lines lie in our coping mechanisms, and hopefully both the university administration and international ones will use this grace period to modify their existing practices.

In the meantime, sick students shouldn't go to class, and everyone should be careful about washing hands, coughing and sneezing on others, and observing basic sanitation.

Because, as Misch said, the flu at this point really is everywhere. It's in 48 states, and likely there will be more NU cases, even if they're not as well-publicized as the first.

"Pay attention, but don't panic," Misch said. We concur.

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