Selfishly thinks how cool it would be to not have to deal with school stuff for a couple weeks. No, I have nothing worthwhile to add to the flu discussion.

I am transport for basketball tournament stuff this weekend. The team is coming to my house after the games today to watch who knows where it came from Wolverine a movie. So I better get to a store to buy massive quantities of snack type foods and drink. Not surprisingly, a dozen or so HS boys can eat an amazing amount of food after 2-3 tournament games.

Can't go to see the parental units again this weekend because of fires closing Alligator Alley. So at least didn't have a conflict of schedule. Also, smoke stinks.

And my eyes pretty much rolled out of my head today when a friend in Raleigh posted that her baby (currently teething and sniffley as often as not) was sniffley and feverish, and did we think he had swine flu? (Almost certainly not.)

I can sympathize with the eye-rolliness, Calli, but parents of babies and toddlers can be odd creatures. It's a weird, weird place to be, mentally, on a normal day; when there's something widespread going on? The brain goes bananas. Especially since so many health care professionals have a way of making parents feel like they're stupid and overreacting, so we learn to downplay things until it's sometimes too late.

When Nate was about three years old (and had been ridiculously healthy up until that point) he caught a severe cold-- one of those that just sucks the life right out of you. He was running fevers and not eating or even drinking much. And I called his doctor's office three days running and the nurse wouldn't even put me through to talk to the doctor-- she kept saying it was a bad cold, everyone had it, and surely I was exaggerating his symptoms. And because I was exhausted with a three year-old and two year-old, I went along with it-- until his nails started showing tinges of blue and I rushed him to the ER where God love 'em, they didn't even stop to do paperwork, just got him into an oxygen tent and on fluids right away. He was diagnosed with pneumonia, transferred to the local children's hospital, and spent a couple of days in the PICU--

Next chance I got, I drove to that doctor's office, slammed the hospital paperwork on the nurse's desk, pointed to the diagnosis, and said loud enough for the entire waiting room to hear, "Pneumonia you clueless twat-- still think I'm exaggerating?"

Of course, I don't know how I might have reacted with something like a potentially pandemic flu going on-- given his symptoms at the time, I most likely would have been a lot more insistent. Hopefully, they would have been more understanding too, but who knows?

It is very difficult as a new parent to know for sure what is serious and what isn't. It must be difficult for doctors to know the difference between overreacting and underreacting parents too. When Brendon was only a few weeks old he had what I thought was much worse than a bad diaper rash. My doctor had me bring him in and he had a staph infection and had to be admitted to the hospital with a tiny IV in his head for days. At that point I could have easily turned into a parent that rushed to the ER at every sniffle.

It's tough. People should wash their hands more though. There has always been hand disinfectant stuff around doctor's offices, but this week when I was at a couple for training people the stuff was on every surface. And my doctors all had lame swine jokes. I didn't ask them their thoughts because I figured they had enough of that from their patients.

Yeah, parents are sort of in a no-win situation. If they rush to the doctor with every sniffle, people say they're overreacting, but if they go, "Eh, it's just a cold," and their kid dies of pneumonia then it's, "Why didn't you go to the doctor?"

But I still really, really doubt my friend's baby has swine flu.

But if there are cases confirmed in a school or a workplace or the like, I don't think closing the institution down until the risk of contagion has passed is an over reaction.

I think that it is an overreaction if the swine flu is no more virulent than the "regular" strains of flu (of which there are about 30,000 reported to the CDC every WEEK).

*Is* the H1N1 swine flu more virulent than the other flu strains already extant? From the data reported so far, it doesn't seem to be.

Again, I'm not suggesting the swine flu is bullshit, or that we should all go around getting up in the personal space of people who we know have it. But closing schools and businesses when there are only a few confirmed cases -- particularly things like Kristin's school closing for 14 days -- really seems like overkill to me, and all it serves to do is to stir up even more panic and overreaction.

(All that said, I'll probably get swine flu and lose a kidney or something, as divine retribution for my devil-may-care attitude here. Karma is a bitch.)

Gotta go get free comics now.

But I still really, really doubt my friend's baby has swine flu.

Yeah, wasn't disagreeing with that-- given your location and the fact that the baby's teething, which is enough to drive a parent over the edge in and of itself.

Has Jilli seen Making Fiends?

With the two students who had it here, they moved them to private dorm rooms. No classes canceled, since the diagnosis came at the end of the last day of classes, and finals are still going on as scheduled.

I took the survey and checked the "I'm unlikely to get it" box. Now I have the sniffles.

The survey is interesting -- it asked about diabetes -- and how likely I am to get it -- well I have it.

And if swine flu is out there, While I am not more likely to get it that anybody else that sees 100s of people everyday, I am more likely to get complications both due to diabetes and asthma. However, because I treat even a mild cold like I am VERY ILL, I take better care of myself when I am sick.

I think with only 1 case -- 14 days is crazy -- the incubation is 2 - 9 days ( I think) . But , on the other hand -- I'd like to say kids stay home with a fever,and I know too many kids that do go to school with fevers, so maybe closing schools is the only way.