The Flu and Girl Scout Camp

The mom in me wants L to have a fun time at Girl Scout camp this weekend. The wife in me is looking forward to a weekend away without the kid. The nurse in me is terrified that I'm going to look back on this weekend as a bad idea: hundreds of kids with a tenuous grip on handwashing and basic sanitary care, together for a weekend at the beginning of what is potentially a pandemic flu.

Many of my friends and family seem to think that this is all a big media hype that has gotten out of control. I hope they're right. However, I don't think so. I trust the CDC and the WHO to look out for public health in a way that my mind can't begin to grasp. If the best epidimiologists in the world are one step away from declaring pandemic, I'm all for stopping it now by putting everyone into quarantine. I've already heard parents making jokes about the school year going long and having to make up "virus days" because of school closures. Close the schools if necessary. I'd rather send my daughter to school all summer than risk her or any of her friends dying for fear of making up a virus day in the summer!

Maybe everyone has a point: maybe it's all a big overreaction. After all, only about 200 people in THE WORLD have died from this so far. Thousands of people die from the flu every year, right? So what makes this different? The high hospitalization and fatality rate. Only about 200 people have died but only about 500 have been diagnosed. That's about a 40% fatality rate. Not a number I'm interested in gambling with. And the people that are dying aren't the ones who die from the flu: the victims were healthy and not in high-risk groups of elderly and infant and immune-compromised. So PLEASE! OVERREACT!!!

The thing is, if the public health officials order these measures before the country/world has had a chance to panic, they will be called fools and everyone will say how much they overreacted. There will be congressional inquiries and agency heads fired for the perceived overreaction. But what the public sees as overreaction will likely just mean that the measures worked; that the epidemic was stopped before it became a pandemic. Good public health policy is rarely applauded. Bad public health policy costs lives.

I don't want to fiddle while Rome burns. I hope our society doesn't turn a deaf ear to what the experts are telling us. If we listen and their prevention measures work and the flu doesn't develop, I hope society doesn't ridicule the leaders who are potentially saving us from global pandemic.

So, while I desperately want the romantic weekend with my husband, I would completely understand, and even applaud, a brave (though some may say rash) decision to close the camp for the weekend.

I changed my mind. The mom in me desperately hopes she's not making a mistake sending her daughter off to camp this weekend. Maybe the mom and the nurse are the same person, after all. Now if I could just do something to appease the wife part . . .

Pilates Update

I've been doing Pilates for over a month now and I'm settling into a routine. I'll admit that one of the things that still pulls me out bed in the early morning is the self-righteous feeling I get from being the kind of person who gets up for an exercise class that starts at 6 a.m. But another part of me just REALLY likes the way I feel. My body is getting stronger and I feel like I'm doing something good for my body when I go to Pilates class. When I miss a class, I'm disappointed for myself, not afraid that I'm letting down the instructor or that I'm not able to live up the new label of "exerciser" that I strive for.

The first intro series that I signed up for finishes at the end of this week. I'm trying to figure out how I can add in another class or two each week. I really DO like this stuff!