Post Gazette: "Eight new cases of swine flu were confirmed at Carnegie Mellon University yesterday, bringing the total to 26 students with H1N1 influenza, and the number is expected to climb.
Penn State University also confirmed several cases, while other local universities reported no problems to date."
12 comments:
My dorm, Mudge House, has apparently been hit the hardest of all the dorms. Let's all hope that it doesn't spread further into the drama department than it already has....or at least protect al the Grapes of Wrath students. Stay healthy everyone and protect yourself.
This flu sucks. I got the flu and the fever made me so dehydrated that I had to go to the ER yesterday.
My ordeal started by going to the campus testing, which was absolutely horrible. The nurse on duty was horrible, he didn't have enough supplies for everyone. Since they don't have adequate supplies they are sending anyone with a temperature of 101 or above and some symptoms to isolated housing! This is absolutely ridiculous and I am so glad I was so bad that I was able to go to the ER for a real diagnosis!
This is such an unfortunate outbreak for the very first week of school. Three people in my class have already been sick. There is a noticable germaphobic atmosphere among students on campus, which will hopefully keep the majority of people from getting sick.
As someone who spent the first two weeks of LAST semester with the flu and unable to get out of bed, please everyone take care of yourselves. Wash your hands, don't touch your face, drink lots of fluid. It sucks and I don't want anyone else to get sick.
(Amusingly, my word verification for this comment was "sanitary". I kid you not.)
I understand that many people think they university's response to H1N1 is absurd. But i really believe it is not. First of all, the number 26 in this article seems funny to me, in that many more than that were in isolation. I just got out myself yesterday morning!
But in terms of the virus' severity, for the individual, its not that scary. its scary if you have underlying health issues, and it would be very bad if 5% or even 10% of the campus population came down with it at the same time. that would just be very unmanagable. According to the CDC, before the end of the virus (probably Dec.) 50% of the population will have been affected. So, be careful. Wash your hands. And DON'T COME TO CLASS IF YOU HAVE A TEMP!!!!
While up to now, I have dodged this flu-bullet (knock on wood), I did however spend a good amount of time in the Carnegie Flu Clinic with two of my classmates. While they are both now fine, the clinic was definitely not the reason for it. While I understand that being swamped by people presenting symptoms, the fact that the clinic was not even equipped with standard testing supplies is horrible. Also, by putting people with a slight fever in isolation together just creates a place where a large variety of germs can be spread.
When you're dealing with a large number of potentially infected people the priority remains preventing others from becoming infected. In the ideal case each person would be isolated individually, but in the real world there's limited space and other resources so some will wind up being kept together. As long as you take basic precautions just being in the same room isn't a terrible issue, it's the usual close interactions and contact with the same surfaces that would be what to watch for, and presumably they're doing what they can to prevent that (I haven't seen the areas they use for isolation but I'd assume that they know at least generally what they're doing).
Consider the alternative - if they said "you might be sick, go back to your dorm and wait 24 hours to see" then instead of 20-30 cases we'd probably have at least 10 times that.
I find it most unfortunate how unprepared the campus was for an outbreak of this sort. There was no plan in order - and in the midst of the crisis, they decided that anyone with a fever of over 100 was to be put in isolation. In my experience while waiting in the clinic, there was only one nurse on call, who had just arrived from Beaver, PA hours earlier. He had no knowledge of the campus, of the student protocol, (and honestly, he asked someone in isolation if he knew if what he was taking was an antiviral or not... i mean... c'mon)
I understand - they must do what they must do - but I certainly wish we had been able have a plan in place to anticipate something of this scale.
I actually was feeling a little under the weather this weekend. I naturally was really worried that it was swine flu. It actually just turned out to be a bad cold. I actually think that this is one reason that the swine flu is effecting as many people as it has and will continue to do. I have heard from a number of people of other things going around like the normal flu, colds, ect. So everyone's immune systems are really low making it easier for Swine Flu to spread.
While I feel terrible for everyone has suffered from this "outbreak" or from a similarly symptomatic recently, I think the craze over H1N1 is a little ridiculous. ITS JUST THE FLU! Yes, its a different kind of flu, but there are MANY different kinds of influenza -- it just so happens a new one seems to have mutated that we don't yet know how to deal with. Yearly, many more people get diagnosed with the standard "common" flu than have been infected by the "Swine Flu". Granted, the flu can/does kill, but usually only the elderly or those with pre-existing conditions. I don't really understand all this ridiculousness over the current flu -- no one ever gets this bent out of shape when the normal flu season comes around in winter. Is it terrible that so many are getting sick? Yes. Is it worth all this madness? No.
Shephaly, a friend from home who came up to CMU for fine are, we out her second day of school with swine flu. It was horrible.
Illness outbreaks are always a bummer. There are some people who just get sick all the time and they seem to catch every disease that's out there. I really don't think that it should get as extreme as having to cancel classes, though.
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