You gotta live a little

56

Tweet

Shut it down, shut it down...the SMSes I received last week had the same message. As a parent rep at my children's school -- it was my duty to convey the rising clamour from parents worried by the swine flu to the school. And as the nation saw its first victim, then its tenth, then its fifteenth that clamour reached (do I dare say it) a fevered pitch. School authorities and health officials gave them many logical reasons why shutting down schools for a short period would not really help the situation -- as the current strain of flu could well last a few months. Also that children at day-schools are at risk of infection at so many other places as well, that the cost benefit analysis of disrupting classes in order to stave off the flu did not add up.

But the chant of 'shut it down, shut it down' ensured no one was really listening. At one school in the Capital, parents burst into classrooms to collect their children -- at another, newspaper photographs showed a hassled mother armed with masks 'rescuing' her children from the jaws of speculative pneumonia.

Now, I am one of those who believe panic is a great motivator. Ask Surat residents, who lived for decades with mountains of steaming garbage, until the plague hit. Or poultry farm owners, who kept chickens in abysmal conditions until the Avian flu hit. Fear and panic is a great way to jolt us out of our 'chalta hai', fatalistic attitude to calamities.

But really, it is time to get a grip. Or at least a handle on the facts - I turned to our in-house expert Amrita Tripathi for help with this:

-H1N1 is by itself not fatal- by and large doctors believe it becomes dangerous when coupled with already compromised immunity. For most people the flu will mean a few days of recovery and extra care.

-Countries that got swine flu long before India, like the US and the UK never shut down cities nor do they plan to as they brace themselves for a 'second wave' of H1N1- and say kids who have recovered from the flu should rejoin school within a couple of days (a great reference site is flu.gov). There's no real data yet that the "Mexico Model" of shutting down the country for 3 days curbed anything but swine flu-panic.

-Some comparatives- At least 1000 Indian children die of diarrhoea alone EVERY day. The UN estimates 2.1 MILLION Indian children die by the age of 5 every year (that's FOUR every minute) from preventable illnesses such as diarrhoea, typhoid, malaria, measles and pneumonia.

-The impending drought (more than 161 districts already, 60% shortfall in many states) and what it will mean for millions below the poverty line in India already malnourished is a much greater threat to our nation's children. And it isn't even infectious.

But fear is infectious. And schools in several cities are now shut down, so are malls and cinema halls. The Dahi Handi has been halted in Maharashtra and Bollywood stars asked to keep away from Ganesh Chaturthi. Anyone who can afford to is staying away from trains, buses, markets, and crowded places.

But is this desire to shut down - coming from a deeper paranoia that's shutting down common sense? When we were kids, we got chicken pox, measles, mumps. We regularly got the flu -- and sniffled our way through it, enjoying the extra cuddles and soup that the infection brought us.

Modern medicine means we no longer deal with most of those illnesses. We have vaccines for absolutely everything from small pox to the common cold. And yet, we are more afraid for our kids than our parents and grandparents ever were. We are more 'immune' than ever, and yet we are more afraid of everything. So it is- shut the schools down, don't play in the park, put the a/c on, the windows up. Play on the WII rather than at the tennis court, and watch TV rather than the sunset.

As I watch my kids at home, almost in tears from boredom, I joke that the only virus they are in danger of catching will come through an e-mail on their computer.

In a world hit by global problems, recession, terror, climate change, are we localising our fears to the point of ridiculousness? Where everything is reduced to risk management. And the risk must be no greater than zero.

When it comes to avoidable risks, like sailing into a tsunami, bungee jumping during a cyclone, sunbathing in Waziristan, or picnicking on the Gaza border, I would say -- caution is a good watchword.

When it comes to the swine flu, and all the other flus that will probably hit us in the coming seasons, I would say- you gotta live a little.

(Pl note: The blogger is a journalist, a mom, but NOT a doctor. If you feel any symptoms coming on - you still need to contact a professional)