Breaking: Swine Flu Arrives in Wisconsin (With an Update)

Update: I’ve been able to find the news conference held in Milwaukee tonight, April 29, regarding the possibility of swine flu.

Amid Brian Williams’ stentorian tones about the world being on the threshold of a pandemic, the Madison NBC affiliate, WMTV-15, just cut in to report that the H1N1 virus, commonly called swine flu, may have felled two individuals, a child and an adult, in the Milwaukee area, and one in Adams County. Several schools in Milwaukee are considering closure.

This is a big damn deal not only for Milwaukee and Wisconsin, but the closest big city, the Wisconsin Dells, known as a water vacation (with the newly-refilled Lake Delton) and gambling spot, is partly in Adams County. Therefore, Adams County is 50 miles away–pretty close to Madison. I expect the first confirmed flu sufferer within a week or so.

Other than that, a few simple tips:

1. Wash your hands throughout the day. Hand sanitizer is fine as a stop-gap measure, but nothing kills the virus like a thorough soaping and rinse. Keep sanitizers and hand creams in your purses and briefcases.

2. Don’t rub your unwashed fingers in your eyes.

3. Cook your pork–really, any meat–products thoroughly. “Thoroughly” doesn’t mean burned. Don’t leave them bloody or pink. That’s one of the things I learned from being born in the South.

4. Face masks don’t work; the airborne virus is so minute that it can pass through the material. Leave them to the doctors, dentists and nurses.

State of Wisconsin with major cities (Courtesy: DNR)

5. If you are sick, stay home. Stay home, workaholics. Don’t come in and infect the whole department or the business. They’ll definitely hate you then.

6. Don’t use Tamiflu or Relenza to “protect” yourselves, that is, to give yourself a immunization. Immunization is different from getting a drug, like Tamiflu or Relenza, to treat the symptoms. This is the main reason why certain viruses are now resistant to antibiotics, because people just used them to fight piddling colds. Only use them if you or your children are actually sick. Then they can work. Otherwise, the virus can become opportunistic, mutate, and become stronger, thus lowering the efficacy of these few drugs to fight the virus. Besides these two drugs, there is nothing else available.

7. Don’t drink or smoke if you feel you are becoming ill and while you are sick. You further lower your resistance to the virus.

8. Cover your mouths when you cough. For more than twenty years, I have noticed so many people not doing this in public. It’s a bad, lazy habit, and it’s the kind of thing we should have learned by kindergarten. That’s the easiest way TB is spread, by a mere cough on a bus. You wouldn’t want someone spreading their germs on you; so don’t do it.

9. Disinfect your doorknobs, faucets, telephones, appliance handles, regularly.

10. Don’t share eating utensils, glasses, cups, and straws.