Swine Flu Precautions : EphBlog

Most important, from a student perspective: Eco Cafe is closing in order to move staff for full “staff serving” at dining halls, instead of self-serve (salad bars, etc). For letter, click

To the Williams Community,

Now that the Centers for Disease Control have determined that the latest flu
strain seems to be spreading beyond people who have recently visited Mexico, the College has decided to take its next preventive step, which involves dining.

Since a potentially major source of virus transmission is the unprotected
handling of shared utensils, Dining Services, beginning tomorrow, will move away from self-serve food stations (salad bars, etc.) in favor of served
portions.

This will take place in all dining areas, including the Faculty House, and will continue for as long as it makes sense. To free up servers for this effort, The ‘82 Grill and Eco Cafe will be closed until we revert to normal operations.

It’s important to remind ourselves and each other of the importance of frequent hand washing and, if you have any respiratory symptoms and fever, of visiting the Health Center, if you are a student, or your doctor, if you are faculty or staff.

One good place to keep abreast of the national situation is the CDC Web
site: http//www.cdc.gov/swineflu .

To close on an Eph note: you might be interested to know that the CDC’s
Acting Director, much in the news these days, is Richard Besser ‘81.

Regards,
Ruth Harrison
Director of Health Services

[4] Comments

Print • Email

4 Responses to “Swine Flu Precautions”

Leave a Reply

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post

If a comment you submitted does not show up, please email us at eph at ephblog dot com. Please note that commenters are required to use a valid email address when submitting comments.

David says:

Fun WSO discussion here. Best quote (apologies for the profanity):

Alright. First of all, fuck the media for completely blowing this whole thing out of proportion and scaring the hell out of people. Seriously, every single time I visit the NY Times website, there’s some new update about the flu and how it’s spreading or some shit. They even have a section devoted to swine flu coverage!

There are a few things that the media seems to be overlooking in their rush to sensationalize this story.

#1) Swine flu is an influenza virus. It is not ebola. Millions of people die from the flu every year, most of them are either elderly, infirm, or very young (infants). People who are fit and generally in good health typically do not die from the flu.

#2) All the cases of death from swine flu have been in Mexico. There have been no deaths in the U.S as of this moment (and don’t try and count that story about the little boy in Texas that the NY Times was talking about. He came to the U.S from Mexico to get treatment.) Has no one taken the time to consider the differences between environments here? Mexico City, where most of the cases originated, is one of the most polluted cities in the world. People who live there are at a significantly higher risk for developing respiratory illnesses and other diseases than in most other places where the virus has been reported.

Also, there’s a good article in WSJ about why the death rate is so high in Mexico. The virus is apparently the same strain in Mexico as in the U.S, so it seems pretty likely that the virus’s lethality is from poor health care.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124096777126666585.html

I’m tired of this sort of crap. The media just loves to talk about things that scare people. I was reading an article in the Record the other day about the journalism panel that was here last week, and I saw a quote that really made me laugh. One older gentlemen on the panel rhetorically asked (i don’t remember exactly) “why don’t young people care about the news anymore?” I almost laughed milk out of my nose.

Why don’t people care about the news? Because it’s full of HORSESHIT! Because it’s turned into a sideshow for entertainment and amusement! Because it knows that the only way it can improve its readership or ratings is to fucking terrify people! I don’t want all this bullshit from the media. In fact, I don’t want anything from them anymore. Unless some really serious shit goes down, they need to drop this story, because it’s only scaring people and it’s pissing me off.

Indeed. But Jason Rapaport seems to misunderstand just what business the media is in. Asking them not to stoke hysteria is like asking amusement park operators to operate their roller coasters at 10 MPH. In both cases, that’s not what the customer wants. The customer wants to be scared. Don’t blame the New York Times. Blame all your the Williams students, faculty and alumni who are spending so much more time reading about swine flu, either via the web or on TV.

April 29th, 2009 at 5:58 pm

Larry George says:

I agree about the media blowing this up and then fanning the resulting wildfires. The 18-to-30 age bracket could, indeed, be at serious risk, however, if this disease gets worse. If you know your history, the thing that was most terrifying about the 1918 influenza was that so many of its fatalities were formerly healthy, robust young people — a pattern that no one expected (and that had not, for understandable reasons, been seen as particularly vulnerable).

April 29th, 2009 at 6:11 pm

frank uible says:

Better safe than sorry. Read about the 1918 Spanish flu.

April 29th, 2009 at 7:50 pm

Ronit says:

I hope this was an intentional menu-choice.

April 29th, 2009 at 11:16 pm