Quarantined

"100 years ago they said if a black man can become the President of the USA, pigs would fly!

On the 100th day of Obama's presidency, guess what? Swine flew!"

Or so the text went, sent to me two months ago by my lovely friend Des. I still find it both crude and amusing. With all the somber crises President Barack has been facing, I wish they'd cut him some slack. We'll just have to be lenient when he lights up a smoke every once in a while, even if that means breaking personal campaign promises. Other the other hand I commend him for exercising his trademark composure in the whole Iran election debacle, unlike some warmongering counterparts of his (I'm looking at you, Cheney) who seemingly can't wait to hustle the hell out of a country who's beginning to unburden herself of religious-totalitarian shackles. Iraq was, and is a mistake. Somehow America has to stop acting like The World's Super Police and start watching their own backyard -- North Korea's boiling up a nuke storm lately, and Kim's rearing his ugly oversized shades to them.

So much for CNN Breaking News. After enlisting myself for round-the-clock updates for a couple of days, I finally decided to "de-follow" it on Twitter. Imagine a slew of bad news greeting me one after the other at the home page, having only a smattering of a dozen friends' "tweets". I signed up at the micro-blogging site two years ago when it was still relatively under-hyped, my trail ran cold because of glorious inactivity, and now I return finding every celebrity in the world broadcasting their every mundane, nose-scratching activity... "For my midnight snack, I ate a taco. It was so delicious that I burped. OMG!!!" Self-promotion has reached the pinnacle of its narcissistic height.

I reach for the remote and switch to the evening news for the meat of the matter. It's strange that just when the A(H1N1) pandemic was beginning to smoothen its kinks after the initial outbreak two months ago, our country caught the wave of late reaction. Either that or the first world countries are doing "damage control" à la the SARS episode in China and Hong Kong, and we're not doing bad after all. But even so, how come it took a full six weeks to have the first reported case, given our congested airports are packed everyday with people from literally all walks of life? And after that were we deluged with nearly a hundred swine flu cases per day -- even in far-flung provinces where nobody traveled! Are the thermoscans really working? Is this another case of "mall security laxness", where the guard languidly inspects or even ignores your belongings -- or in this situation, arriving passengers? Could our pigs have cooked up a mysterious malady of their own? They say the whole thing originated from exported Asian hogs. Or is this the administration pumping up juice on a slow news day, diverting the attention from Ate Glo's Amazingly Extravagant Travels?

Increasing from 5 cases, to 50 and then to 100+ is seemingly unbelievable in the span of a week. Are we just mistaking flu for swine flu? Could we be playing a game of "The first one who sneezes, you're it!" Dengue is worse than A(H1N1); we should be worrying more about pesky mosquitoes than buying face masks by the barrel, which only a provide a false sense of security and are more prone to contamination. Unless the virus mutates and develops into more dangerous strains, there is no need to ring the panic bell. (Whenever I hear words like "virus" and "mutate" and "strain" in the same sentence, I cannot help but envision scenarios of horror flicks, where zombies replicate because of a certain something in the air.)

I fear we have been compounded in alarmist territory. Health advisories and the accompanying media attention should be constructively tempered because generally, we only have mild cases that are easily cured in a day. There is a right to information, but there is also a right to sanity. I understand this is not a matter to be taken lightly, but we don't need a blow-by-blow account of the people infected, prompting schools and universities to cancel classes for prolonged periods due to only one or two cases. Standard commencements of the schoolyear opened later than expected, only to be suspended again. There's even an ongoing threat of storms looming ahead, to add to the frothy mix. I reckon the kids are having a field day. I'm secretly enjoying a post-summer vacation too. But in the long run, school suspensions are not going to work. It causes a "ripple effect". The morale dips, the tuitions under-spent, the allowance war chests withheld, the mind slacks, the parents groan, the kids enjoy, the teachers get bored, the school gets hopefully cleaned up for a day and then what? Simply every minute of what was supposed to be hours of substantial education were relegated to an unnecessary back burner. Extending the school year would lead to everybody whining in varying degrees. Man takes time to get accustomed to drastic changes, though we have no other worthy option. It would be a tad ridiculous to hold final exams on Halloween, wouldn't it?

Confronting A(H1N1) is not a daunting task. If you've traveled, sweat out the jet lag. If you're outdoors, bring your favorite hand sanitizer and a pack of tissues; it's time to show a little poise, hygiene and environmental awareness especially if you're a public transport veteran. If you're in suspicion of being infected, there's nothing like a good rest, awesome prescription meds, gallons of water and hot chicken soup to wash the bug away. If symptoms persist, consult your doctor. If you're one of the thousands of students collaterally sidetracked by the flu scare, start planning on how you can recoup lost opportunities of learning. Review your past lessons, take advanced readings. Discover a new hobby, or recapture an old pastime. Do something pleasurable and productive besides Facebook. (You can always write an essay!) After all this is done and gotten over with, you still have a future to worry about. On the verge of getting a job, you can't reason out to the HR officer "There was a swine flu outbreak in 2009 and so I forgot how to study." Or live.

We now return to regular programming. Funny how a self-imposed week-long quarantine does to you.