It happened today. I had my temporary moment of panic over swine flu. On the way to work I was listening to the radio and they read an email from a doctor in central Texas who had just been to a briefing by the WHO. They read all the doom and gloom facts about how we're all going to catch it. It was kind of scary... let me share a few.
**While only about 10-15% of people who are exposed to regular flu actually get it, almost ALL of people exposed to swine flu will become sick because there is virtually no herd immunity.
**When you're exposed you can be contagious for up to 11 days, including two days before you even show symptoms. Let's see how many people you can infect.
**The current number of reported cases is a drastic underestimation because the CDC doesn't officially confirm a case until three days after it was confirmed by blood test in the doctor's office.
At this point I'm almost to work, waiting at the light on the feeder and I notice the guy in the car in front of me is lighting a pipe. I reflect for a moment, thinking how strange it is these days to see a pipe smoker, and then the light turns green. We start to move and I realize I can actually smell his smoke all the way from his car into mine. Which means little particles of the air he's breathing in his car, I am now breathing in mine. And I wonder, in our world of germ-phobics (which I am SO not), and hand-sanitizers, and sterile cleanliness, just how much air gets recycled from lung to lung. And I hope he doesn't have swine flu.
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