I'm trying

I'm definitely fighting off some bug. Feel really tired and a bit achy. Chilled too. Could be hormones. Could be the dreary weather. Could be overtraining as well. Swimming is going so well and I've been running a lot too. Tonight I will do hot yoga and try to sweat out my stresses. My boss is also ill with a viral infection, not sure if it's H1N1. Listening to CBC radio this morning I learned that often it is not the flu that kills but other complications such as bacterial pneumonia. This is good news for me, because I've had the pneumococcal vaccine, and it is good for life. After my experience living through the SARS epidemic in China (that was exciting and scary) when I returned to Canada I started taking seasonal flu shots and this one time pneumonia vaccine. Since then I have only had very minor colds lasting a few days. Before that I would get a major cold or the flu every year and then as a complication, bronchitis or pneumonia. The last lung infection I had was 8 years ago, and it lasted for months. I ended up having to take asthma medication to stop the coughing and crackling in my chest. Never again.

I'm not fearful at all about getting the H1N1 vaccination. Can't get it for another week anyway. Wondering if I need it since I've already been exposed to it by at least five people. We'll see.

One of my students is away all week because he has the flu. Grrr. I knew he was ill last week, it seemed like a bad cold, lots of sniffling and sneezing. Believe me, I tried to get him to blow his nose properly but he kept wiping it with his hand. Then I would get the hand sanitizer out, or make him go wash his hands. After he left I disinfected the table and everything else he touched. Hopefully these precautions work and my other students and I don't get sick now. One of my friends has H1N1 as well, and she caught it from one of her students. She's pretty sick and has missed a few days of work. Me, I'm paranoid because I know if I get the flu I'll end up with bronchitis. No vaccines until November. Just have to try to stay healthy one way or another now.

Parents! I implore you, if your children are ill please please keep them at home.

In 2003 I was teaching in a high school in the suburbs of Beijing. One day I entered my classroom to find my students packing up and leaving. They told me there was a bad disease and their parents had ordered them to come home. A lot of my students came from other provinces. A lot of my students were came from very wealthy powerful families. They were always the first to know.

Later on that day we had a staff meeting. People were panicking. Some Canadian teachers wanted to go home. I wasn't sure what to do. I talked to my younger colleagues. They had decided to stay. If we stayed, we got paid, even if there were no students to teach. If we stayed we were safe in the school grounds. I decided to stay. About half of the teachers went back to Canada. I can't remember how many months it went on. Us living at the school, trying to teach our students online. We were required to keep a certain number of office hours after which we were free. Most of us, lived in the teachers apartments inside the school grounds, but some, like the Canadian principal lived in an apartment just outside. The Chinese teachers lived in the school grounds as well. By law, they were required to stay inside the school grounds. No one knew how this disease spreaded. Was it airborn?

One morning, early, I got a harsh knock on my door. Hurry up, everyone to the clinic for x-rays! What? I wasn't even sick, what did I need an xray for? They told us it was precautionary. I told them to fuck off, I wasn't sick and I wasn't getting an x-ray. I went back to bed. Cases of chinese medicine appeared at our doors. It apparently was very expensive and there was a limited supply. You see, the president of our school was a very wealthy influential Chinese Canadian with many connections. He was able to buy this special immune boosting medicine for us. Well, I took it. You had to heat it up. It tasted worse than mud. Actually , it tasted a lot like the typhoid vaccine. Have you had that? It was really hard to take. Like drinking poo. Seriously. But the Chinese believe that the worse the medicine tastes the better it is.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. Staying inside. I decided to go out with a friend. At first we only went across the street to the store for some ice cream. Of course we bought some for the Chinese teachers. They were very upset with us for going out, and endangering their lives. The thing is, I never felt afraid. But they were happy to have the ice cream. One time I went out, it was very hot day. The guard at the gate was instructed to take our temperature before we could come back in. A sign of SARS was a fever. Well, he had this temperature wand which he placed near my forehead. OF course it read high, I was sweating from the heat of the day! He wouldn't let me back in. I almost panicked. But I went to the store and bought and icecream and placed in on my forehead. Temperature down! (This technique proved to be very effective. I used it to make sure my temperature was low leaving the country. At the airport, you had to pass by temperature sensors. It was tense because it was July and the weather was very hot and humid.)

After a week. I got really bored. I decided to take the bus into downtown Beijing. Three of us went. We wore masks on the bus and tried to not touch anything. The streets of the usually bustling city were deserted. The markets very bare. The sellers so desperate to make a sale, we got some very good deals. All the cultural sites were very empty as well. It was actually very safe to be downtown as there was no one there!

And everywhere we went we saw were workers with containers on their backs, spraying, spritzing the sidewalks, the bushes, bicycles with a bleach mixture. Outside the hospitals and clinics, guards in astronaut type white suits. That was a little scary.

To contain the virus, they built temporary hospitals, clinics to quarantine the sick. The doctors and nurses wore the most incredible protective gear. I watched on tv one night, one of the doctors taking off his boots after work and pouring out the sweat that had accumulated in them. These medical workers were isolated in the hospital for at least a month, not allowed to go home to their families at night. After a month they were then sent to a quarantine area for over a week to make sure they were not sick before they went home to their families. Every doctor or nurse that went through this lived and none of their family members got ill. Too bad they didn't do this in Toronto!

Though the Chinese government knew of the virus a few months before the offricial announcement, I am still impressed with how they dealt with it once the truth came out. Can you imagine 1.4 billion people panicking? Well, it didn't happen. The Chinese grapevine is very efficient. Despite the government trying to keep things secret, it really doesn't work there very well. There are too many people there that are used to keeping quiet and finding ways to spread the word. And I was impressed with the media. If they had the media we have here things would've been crazy. They were able to keep everyone calm, to keep things in a positive light (We are Chinese we can conquer anything!) and so the so called pandemic was kept under control.

Toward the end of June, the students came back. They were happy to be back. Their parents had forced them to stay home that whole time. Was it three months? I can't remember.

Anyway. It seems that every year there is a flu scare. I'm not saying we shouldn't take care. But the media here is just so keen on jumping on any story, they appear to blow things out of proportion. Every year people die of the flu. These people are already unhealthy. Most of the people who have got this swine flu have recovered already. As for those who believe this is a conspiracy, whatever. These viruses start in countries where animals and humans live in densely populated areas. I've seen it first hand. Most flus have always started in Asia. And they start several months before we get them. Wash your hands people!