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In print | Published September 17, 2009

While there has yet to be any definitive announcement from the administration regarding the status of the H1N1 virus (more commonly referred to as swine flu) on Swarthmore’s campus, there has certainly been a flurry of rumors swirling amongst the student population.

Rumors abound as to which student has supposedly contracted the virus and what steps the administration will take to contain the flu and what will happen in the event of an outbreak.
Simply put, uncertainty has engendered still more uncertainty.

Of course, the Dean’s Office has already sent information to both students and our families regarding the college’s awareness of the situation — certain campuses across the nation are slowly reporting cases of swine flu — and has also released an informative piece on preventive measures. By and large, these measures are reasonable; they emphasize hygiene, exercise, rest, vaccination and open communication with the good folks over at Worth Health Center.

What seems to be lacking in the area of open communication from the administration, however, is what exactly the procedure is for dealing with confirmed cases of swine flu on our campus, should the situation ever come to that — and how an outbreak will be contained.

At nearby East Stroudsburg University, for example, the procedure was made explicit to students during their orientation. The steps taken by the university in the event that somebody does fall ill with swine flu are as follows: Ill students voluntarily go to the health center to get tested for the virus. Parents of the students who test positive for swine flu are notified immediately and asked to take their children home; for those students who cannot be transported home conveniently, quarantine in their dorm rooms is enforced. In either case, the student is isolated from the rest of the campus until they cease to display signs of the flu for more than 24 hours. At ESU, two students who tested positive for swine flu have already been sent home under this policy.

We belabor the specific steps ESU takes regarding the virus not because we want our administration to do likewise, but because we hope that the administration will be as transparent in informing the campus about how we will deal with confirmed cases. In fact, there are some rather problematic features of ESU’s policy that should be avoided.

First, a few key facts about the H1N1 virus should be made clear. H1N1 is contagious, most likely in the same manner that seasonal colds are contagious, though it is unclear how contagious swine flu is.

The flu, as its name suggests, originated from pigs and can indeed be transmitted from pigs to humans and vice versa, though one definitely will not catch the virus simply from eating pork.
Additionally, H1N1 is contagious for up to one and a half weeks even before any external symptoms appear in the afflicted.

This fact raises many issues with whether the hassle of evacuating infected students from campus is worth the not-insignificant resources expended to make that happen. Not only do parents have to go through the process of taking their children home, but students will also surrender school days already paid for in hefty tuition bills.

Most importantly, such a policy means that the students being quarantined have already had up to one and a half weeks to infect other people — and that is assuming they went to the Health Center immediately after suffering initial symptoms of the H1N1 virus.

To go through the charade of quarantining students (which by itself is already challenging to implement — what about international students and people with roommates? Should we throw everyone into The Barn?) seems, in light of these considerations, an awful waste of time and energy.
To lend further credibility in the argument against a policy like ESU’s is the fact that most students who contract the flu will end up recovering without requiring medical care.

Here is where the preventive measures suggested by our own administration at Swarthmore College come into play — those tips will help combat against swine flu just as they will against the seasonal flus that plague every school year.

There is one part of ESU’s flu strategy that we can and should crib. In the event that a student does become quarantined, ESU’s health center directly contacts the student’s professors explaining the misfortune that has occurred. Such direct communication — and communication is certainly the key point to emphasize in this editorial — helps ease the stress for all parties involved.

The overriding message, however, is that there really ought not to be undue hysteria concerning swine flu, both on our and the administration’s parts. While the laws of probability — and common sense — essentially dictate that, at some point, this campus will finally play host to H1N1, the facts clearly show that there need not be an unnecessary waste of time and energy to carry out procedures that ultimately do very little to decrease our chances of getting the virus.

We return, then, to the issue of transparency. After all, rumors are only fueled by lack of authoritative information to the contrary. As the situation currently stands, the lack of information available to students has led to what is in our view unnecessary worrying.

Hopefully, the administration will be honest with us as to who has indeed contracted the flu and what will be done with the unfortunately stricken.

As far as the issue of a vaccine is concerned, obviously in the present economic climate there is little incentive for money to be invested into procuring a vaccine if there remain doubts as to the effectiveness of such a vaccine.

The college, however, has made plans to administer the vaccine to those afflicted with the H1N1 virus as soon as a viable vaccine is available. The projected date for this step forward is mid-October.
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” the great Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said. It is true that swine flu does pose very real hazards to our lives. But by understanding the virus and by being beneficiaries of an open and reasonable administration, the consternation over H1N1 can easily be alleviated to some degree.

The H1N1 virus need not be a great unknown — even if, admittedly, relatively little is publicly known about it. Our sense of inevitability regarding the virus should be complemented by an equally powerful inclination not to overreact.

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