H1N1

It’s finally happened in Tokigawa. On Monday there were 6 JHS students from class 3-2 out sick from the H1N1 flu, so it was decided that none of the students from that class would come to school again until Friday.

I had heard of this happening in other towns in my area, and it’s always seemed like kind of a strange concept. Back in May or June, H1N1 first showed up in Tokigawa. Apparently 3 students at one of my elementary schools were sick, and I think they kept the students in 5^th grade home for a few days. Since then, I hadn’t heard of there being any serious problems with students being sick with any sort of flu. But then last Friday, one of the 3^rd-year students at my junior high school called in sick with the flu, and everyone has been on high alert since then.

On Monday, when I went to classes with 2^nd year students, 2/3rds of the students were wearing the hallmark Japanese white face-masks, and a lot of the teachers donned them first thing in the morning as well.

I should also probably interject at this point that my JHS students just finished mid-term exams last week, and the grades for the 3^rd year students are especially important this term because next term they will be applying to high schools. I’m sure all that stress has contributed to the situation.

Here's where I get opinionated, so stop reading if you couldn't give a flying fig about what I think about H1N1. ;-)

I don’t really know how other countries are handling the hype surrounding H1N1. I did read the other night on the BBC that Obama declared a state of emergency in the States to make sure all the resources health care professionals need in order to detect and treat patients with H1N1 were available, since it’s assumed a lot of people (understatement) are going to come down with it now that it’s full-on flu season. But I have no idea if the same thing is happening in schools or at businesses in the States or in other countries, i.e. if a certain number of students or employees from the same part of the school or company come down with H1N1 at the same time, if they keep everyone from that section home for a few days, hoping to contain the spread of the flu….I’d be curious to hear if anyone wants to comment!

I can’t get over the feeling that Japan is over-reacting to the H1N1 situation. Granted, I’m obviously no expert, and maybe in the end Japan will be the better for their caution (those of you in the medical field or have memorized the CDC website, feel free to correct my mis-perceptions!). But, from the first day more towards the beginning of the year when the news about H1N1 went global, people here started freaking out, canceling trips to Tokyo for example, for fear of catching H1N1, even though it hadn’t even shown up in Japan yet. It didn't take long for it to arrive in Japan after the 'global disbursement' discussion started. This was months before students were supposed to go to New Zealand and Australia for summer exchange programs, yet, even after multiple months of H1N1 being on Japanese soil, SO many of those short-term summer exchange programs were cancelled because people were afraid of catching the flu in a foreign country…even though by that point they were just as likely to catch it in Japan (I had a chance to give my opinion on the matter to our schools' Superintendent...I have no idea if anything I said made a difference, but thankfully our town's JHS exchange trip to New Zealand went ahead as scheduled! Although I did hear from the New Zealand side that our group was incredibly hypocondriacle (I know I just made up that word) this year...). There are bottles of anti-bacterial and alcohol solution at the entrances to almost any large-scale public place now…department stores, hotels, restaurants…which actually isn’t a bad idea even without the whole H1N1 situation! But I remember coming to school on a Monday two weeks after H1N1 arrived in Japan and all the teachers were telling me to be careful because over the weekend there had been one new case of H1N1 in Japan….and it had occurred about as far away from our area as you can get and still be in the same country. Yeah...I think I'm still going to be more concerned with being attacked by ninja mosquitoes, thank you very much...

Anyway, I think it’s fair to be cautious, since, as the CDC (Center for Disease Control) has indicated, it’s strange that this kind of flu is being passed from human to humans instead of just from animals to humans, and there’s no way of knowing yet whether or not it will further mutate. But it seems to me it would be just as useful to be telling people that, for example, more than 30,000 people die in the U.S. every year from normal flu, and seeing as how there haven’t been anywhere near that number of fatalities yet GLOBALLY for H1N1 (as far as I know anyway), that maybe we should calm down a little. Again, I’m no medical expert, but isn’t it normal for more people to become sick with a new strain of illness since nearly no one has ever had it before, therefore virtually no one has ever had a chance to build up antibodies against it? And isn’t it actually better for people to get H1N1 while it’s still relatively benign? To suffer through what usually ends up being symptoms very similar to those of the normal flu now, build up an anti-body army that might better protect an individual if H1N1 does become a little worse in the future? I wonder if it can be categorized in the same realm as chicken pox….better to get it now and get it over with than get it later when you suffer more.

Anyway, those are simply my musings from my little, rural corner of my Japanese island, which is again being inundated with rain from what I’m assuming is another typhoon. All being said, when the clinics in my town finally get ANY sort of flu vaccine, I’ll be one of the first in line, because I have asthma, so even the normal flu is twice as bad for me….I don’t like to consider how H1N1 would affect me, being more of a nuisance respiratorially and all (again, making up words, I know)!