Swine Flu - The great mania

I resisted myself this long to write an article on the deadly H1N1 flu - also known as Swine flu. But the panic around this, changed priorities among people and in general the way people look & behave these days made me to dedicate an article to this H1N1 virus.

First of all, my due apologies to other viruses which causes equally (or more) dangerous diseases like "Dengue" & "Chicken Gunya". I am not going to talk about them in this article. I sometime feel bad for these other viruses which are not getting the due attention & respect they also deserve as H1N1.

Secondly, I want to apologize to any of the friends, well wishers or anyone known to me who gave me a "big smile" on meeting me at some mall or in some "crowded" place wearing a mask. I am sorry that I not only missed your smile, but also could not recognize you in your new found looks.

Headlines in the paper is about Swine flu, all news channels cover the same news. Tired of all these, go to office and open your mail box. There will be atleast couple of warning mails on this :-(

Last weekend, we had gone to a doctor clinic to get some treatment to Poorvi. Although we went there wearing the mask, psychologically I had got swine flu next day. You just cough once, people give a suspicious look. Imagine sitting in the middle of so many patients, who are all coughing, sneezing & with high fever. We were sitting there for almost one hour, before our turn came for the checkup. Definitely some virus can easily find the gateway to our mouth & nose through that mask. I had kept myself under observation for next one or two days to ensure that none of the serious virus have infected me.

You meet people wearing masks in malls, on the street, in the bus and every other place. Is it just for their precaution they are wearing the mask OR are they infected themselves?. Its a million dollar question. So, I avoid handshakes with these people & it is also difficult to recognize people wearing some sophisticated masks. So only way to "connect people" these days seems to be through mobile phones. It is safe & no need to wear a mask while talking. :-)

With schools closed for a week, malls having less number of visitors this mania is spreading much faster than anticipated. It was SARS in 2002-2003 which brought world out of recession, can Swine-Flu do the magic in 2009? All good things will end. All bad things like recession will end too. May be it needs some worst things like SARS & Swine flu to end? Time will tell.