Checking my e-mail earlier this week, I found something curious in my junk folder. Generally, junk e-mail consists of messages from someone from one of my classes begging me for notes because they have not actually shown up all semester, messages from Ebay telling me what a great deal I could get on a used toaster and message from the Ball State Multicultural Center reminding me that it still, in fact, exists.
And generally when I check my e-mail in the morning, I get a chance to bond with my delete key. However, when I was going through my inbox earlier this week, I was asked a question in the subject line of a particular e-mail that shook me to the core.
Would a flu pandemic affect your degree?
The obvious answer to this question was no, because as far as I'm aware, there is no flu pandemic. It seems like every year the media and the health-conscious world go into a mass fervor when flu season rolls around. They start asking questions: How many people is this flu season going to kill? Are we going to have enough flu vaccines? How much should we charge for said vaccines? How about $10,000 per shot?
So we get all this hype and buzz and a few people actually pay the exorbitant amount of money to get an early flu vaccine, and then flu season comes and goes and nobody really notices. One would think that with all the build-up before each flu season, there would be some sort of noticeable impact on society. Outside of a nursing home and a pediatric clinic, there isn't one.
It's a simple matter of supply and demand. Every year the media scares us into thinking that this year's flu strain is going to be worse than ever before. And by not producing enough flu vaccines, pharmaceutical companies can then drive up the price. And then when the flu shows up, the people who got the vaccine don't get the flu, but the majority of the people who didn't get the vaccine also don't get the flu.
A few years ago, a disease called SARS broke out in China. Even though the disease was an ocean away, the U.S. media jumped on the story and told everyone in America that SARS was coming and that we were all doomed. Consequently, a bunch of people in New York and San Francisco bought a lot of dust masks that would supposedly protect them from the disease. These people didn't buy the masks because SARS was coming; they bought the masks because people in New York and San Francisco are gullible. Fear can often supersede truth.
The problem comes when people start asking loaded questions like "Would a flu pandemic affect your degree?" It sounds scary, but if you really think about it, it's like asking, "Would a piece of gravel in your shoe stop you from completing a marathon?"
Yes, having the flu sucks and it isn't fun, but it's just a minor nuisance. As students in our late teens and early twenties, our immune systems should be in top form. Even if there was a flu pandemic, which means it's a disease on a global scale, we'd be moderately inconvenienced for two, maybe three weeks before we got back to business as usual.
So don't let the hype scare you and don't think that getting the flu is going to end your college career. If you're really motivated, it's going to take something a lot stronger than a cousin of the common cold to stop you from reaching your goal. Besides, you'll miss more class sitting at the health center waiting for a vaccine than you would by actually contracting the disease.
Write to Paul at pjmetz@bsu.edu
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