Sick of the flu

I’ve got a case of H1OOON1OOO Influenza, also known as “Sick of H1N1.” Symptoms include eye rolling, fatigue and earaches from absorbing the thousands of voices hording the media with swine flu. Bill Maher, who arrogantly dismissed the seriousness of swine flu and the benefit of its vaccine on his HBO talk show, seems to share my disease.

During his interview with Tennessee’s former Republican senator Dr. Bill Frist, a heart surgeon and author, about swine flu, Frist explicitly stated that vaccination is the key preventative measure for the that battle against a worldwide pandemic. Frist communicated the importance of pregnant women receiving the vaccine, as they are nine times more susceptible to a fatal case of swine flu. Maher interrupted, telling pregnant women not to get the “disease
[stuck] in your arm.”

Though Maher blatantly expressed his personal skepticism of vaccinations in general, his criticism of H1N1’s overblown exposure was inaccurately translated to an assumption of H1N1’s harmlessness. “This is not a very serious flu, let’s be honest,” Maher said on his show. In impatience, he then jumped to criticizing the scientists behind the vaccine and those who support and utilize vaccines by calling them “idiots” via Twitter.

I’m just as tired of hearing about the ever-present swine flu as anyone. But just because I’m not physically effected by it doesn’t mean I have the right to dismiss it. Maher, like me, is sick of the media’s fluctuating obsession with the disease. But instead of clearing up the subject, he adds even more confusion with his own conjectural opinions of medicine. It’s that very entanglement between opinion and fact that frustrates me, and it even tempts me to dismiss the issue altogether.

But should we dismiss the proven science that the swine flu vaccine is 98 percent effective just because we would like the issue to disappear in a way that does not involve our active effort to combat it?

We cannot be too lazy when it comes to our health. Just because it requires effort to sort through the empirical facts and theoretical opinions or to get our hands on a vaccine does not mean that the effort is “idiotic.” Maher’s lazy approach to the uneasy facts of disease, medicine and the media may be his own spoonful of sugar, but we’ve got to remain attentive to get the medicine down.

Though the vaccine is not available on campus for all students, Tulane’s Student Health Center is currently offering the H1N1 vaccination to students who have diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease or asthma, are pregnant, work in health care or are frequently exposed to high-risk populations. The Student Health Center also provides a Web site with quick and thorough information on H1N1. Visit www.sph.tulane.edu/flu for more information.

Madeline Roe is a freshman in Newcomb-Tulane College. She can be reached for comment at mroe@tulane.edu.