Colchester Sixth Form College: Swine Flu - Hitting the Nation, Hitting Home (From Essex County Standard)

Colchester Sixth Form College: Swine Flu - Hitting the Nation, Hitting Home

9:00am Friday 4th December 2009

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Swine Flu: Hitting the Nation, Hitting Home.

Anger burnt like the fiery fever upon my brother’s forehead. An entire half term that I had premeditated to be brimming with opportunity and future evaporated. Evaporated into the lies and twists fed to us through the media.

I love the media. Adore it in fact. However, never believe everything that you read; belief relies on two contrasting factors: reason and emotion.

Reason tells us if an article or a news story is full of facts, to believe it. Emotion on the other hand, emotion is something from a story that we can only grasp when we experience it. I experienced the panic, the pain and the patience that World Health Organisation didn’t tell the readers about swine flu.

The panic - whether you are the plagued person or the grieving relative - your entire half term, the one week you were depending on to survive another seven weeks of non–stop, gruelling work, those few hours of sanctum disappear before your eyes along with any hope of rejuvenation you had collected. All of it. How will we get through it all now?

You feel hopeless.

The pain - you feel incapable, you cannot aid your brother or comfort yourself. The incompetence of the hierarchy means it is crucial to have pessimism full to the zenith. We just get ruined. Sleep fails us. We are bursting with negativity. Arguments flare and consume us. We meet the point when our minds are full and heavy from thoughts that never empty.

Reserve the majority of your energy though, for patience. Be patient with your loved one when they refuse to eat your slaved-over tomato soup. Save patience for WHO, for they were the ones that taught us the difference between swine flu and man flu… swine flu is contagious! And have patience with your patient’s recovery; even when they request hot water bottles and silk tissues on the hour, every hour. Retain patience with the huge bill you will receive for purchasing 100 loo rolls within 2 weeks (proved true). Keep faith and patience as you shove the horse tablets down a mucous lined throat that writhes in rebellion. But above all maintain patience with the mirror tomorrow morning… Note to readers… if trepidation of catching the dreaded disease riddles you; do not enter the chemists’! I know I said don’t believe everything you read, but as a warning people with the ‘Kill Joy illness’ are going in to pick up their own prescriptions. “We were specifically told not to” I hear your desperate thoughts cry. Just one piece of advice - follow my lead and hide at your Nan’s for the week.

Hear me now! Hypochondriacs now is your time, as it has been shown from my experience and other people’s experiences that the symptoms go unnoticed for up to a week.

Keeping in mind all those that noticed too late, be paranoid!

By Kayleigh Gordon

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