I was reading a news report recently and learned that the globe-trotting groom with tuberculosis is traveling outside the country with his wife and it made me think about how he flew in a crowded plane, while highly contagious.
This is a frightening picture. For those who haven’t flown in a while, I can tell you from recent, personal experience that today’s airplanes have small seats, crowded close together.
World health officials are predicting a pandemic (whether the from bird flu or some other flu strain), which is a world-wide epidemic. Throughout the history of mankind, some form of pestilence, like the Black Plague, has frequently decimated entire nations.
Diseases like diphtheria, whooping cough, smallpox and typhoid fever killed children of my parent’s generation and in my generation we feared polio, chicken pox and measles. The only way to keep those diseases from spreading was by putting the patient into quarantine.
When I was in elementary school, children would be out of school for two weeks with chicken pox or measles and couldn’t return without a certificate from the doctor stating they were no longer contagious. Even a child with a heavy cold would be sent home and not allowed to return until all the symptoms were completely gone.
Office workers were encouraged to stay home when contagious because they worked in close proximity to others in an enclosed building. Washing one’s hands does not help much when a coworker is coughing and sneezing in close quarters. To avoid spreading the illness and disrupting productivity, the sick were not allowed to work.
As a child, I heard stories of the influenza pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people. People would leave for work, seemingly fine, and would drop in the streets, gasping and struggling to breathe, before they reached the bus stop. People died shortly after they exhibited symptoms. With the memories of the Spanish influenza still fresh in their minds, our parents and grandparents were constantly worried about keeping themselves and their children from being exposed to any kind of flu.
Today, our children frequently sit in classrooms filled with children who are sneezing and coughing. Our office workers drag themselves to work despite fever and chills and sore throats.
Why don’t they stay at home, we might ask?
Some parents, like single mothers without child support or family to help, must work to survive. Miss too many days of work and they no longer have a job. If they don’t have someone to keep their sick child, they will send the child to school or day care. If they get sick themselves, they will work anyway because they want to save any sick leave they might have for their children.
Many employers have limited sick leave available for their employees and few companies offer sick leave for parents to take when their children are ill.
Avian or “bird” flu is particularly virulent and more than half of those infected die. World heath organizations are monitoring Avian flu, which is carried by many wild birds worldwide. So far, Avian flu has been spread from infected birds directly to humans or contaminated surfaces. Person to person spread has, so far, been limited. Should the virus mutate, it might become more easily spread from person to person. If that happens, quarantines might be the best defense — at least until a truly effective vaccination targeting Avian flu is developed.
But quarantines only work when they are strictly enforced and I wonder how many US businesses will voluntarily accept loss of profits to shut down in the face of an epidemic.
The economic impact will be even worse for the workers, many of whom live paycheck-to-paycheck. How will they pay their bills? How many won’t seek medical care because they have no insurance?
I don’t have the answers and all I can do is pray it never happens.
Barbara Grider is staff writer for The Independent. Contact her at bgrider@gulfcoastnewspapers.com.
