Dodo Flu

The swine flu pandemic is certainly something that is on people's minds these days. There has been a lot of hysteria in certain parts of the word and I find it hard to tell if it's completely justified or not. Obviously, people are dying from this virus which is a terribly unfortunate thing, but I'm not sure if it is as serious as is claimed. Certainly, conflicting opinions on the matter from "experts" don't help. Some say it's a new super-strain for which vaccines will become futile while cynics liken it to the SARS and bird flu outbreaks which just seemed to eventually go away.

In all the talk about prevention of swine flu, the issue of personal hygiene has reared its head. Many places I've gone (at least within Dublin and London) have signs informing people how to blow their noses and sneeze properly i.e. use a tissue and dispose of it immediately afterwards. Common knowledge? Maybe not.

The latest aid to facilitate personal hygiene throughout my university, and probably other places, are dispensers of hand cleaning gel. I've seen them in my school, the accommodation building and the gym amongst other places. This is all well and good, but my concern - and I'm almost certain this will happen - is that once these dispensers run out they will not be replaced/refilled. I think it's a case of short-sightedness whereby authorities think they must be seen to be doing something so they've installed these dispensers, not thinking that they'll empty quite quickly and will have to be indefinitely replaced. Unless the goal is to get people into the habit of regularly cleaning their hands and that eventually, even without the dispensers, they'll do it automatically, I believe this will just be another knee jerk reaction.

Similarly to the time I found an iodine tablet in my drawer at home that was issued in the post 9/11 frenzy and fear of a terrorist attack on Selafield, I envisage a situation in a few years where people are walking around and they see these brackets everywhere on the walls - possibly still holding the empty gel dispensers - and a conversation ensues:

"What's this thing there for?"
"Oh, remember back in 2009 when everyone got in a big kerfuffle about that swine flu thing and they installed these everywhere so people would wash their hands?"
"Oh yeah, what ever happened to swine flu anyways?".
"Went the way of the dodo seemingly."
"I hear he died of swine flu."

I hope I'm right :-)