# Has the swine flu been overhyped?



## CDL (Sep 30, 2008)

FOX News Blogs » FOX Forum » Forum Contributor 
May 2nd, 2009 2:06 PM Eastern
*DR. MARC SIEGEL: Swine Flu - It's Not the Killer You Think It Is*

*By Marc Siegel, M.D.
FOX News Medical Contributor/Associate Professor, NYU School of Medicine/Author, "False Alarm; the Truth About the Epidemic of Fear and Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic"*
I was listening to a conference call on Friday, organized by the NYC Health Department about - you guessed it - swine flu (now known as H1N1). The discussion centered around "Influenza-like illness" and it was soon clear to me that&#8230;
1) It is a late influenza season this year and some of these illnesses are from the garden-variety mild influenza B.
2) A lot of the so-called "influenza cases" are really just reports by worried people with the sniffles. When all is said and done, it is looking more and more like H1N1 (a designation which describes two proteins on the surface of the flu virus which help it spread) will end up being a mild, over-hyped virus despite the fact that it is new.
*In the current swine flu scare the virus is assumed to be a more powerful human killer than it actually is. In reality it appears to losing virulence as it spreads human to human and is not that transmissable, and is NOT becoming widespread.*​As I described in my book "False Alarm; the Truth About the Epidemic of Fear," there is a history of hysterical ovverreaction to health risks in this country especially as evidenced by the swine flu fiasco of 1976, SARS in 2003 and the bird flu scare in 2005.
In each case, Some of this overreaction was due to a distortion of the scientific information about the virus itself. In 1976, when a swine flu virus appeared to kill a military recruit and then be present in the blood of 500 others (who never got sick) this led to a massive hysteria and vaccination program for a pandemic that never occurred. Forty millon Americas were vaccinated and ascending paralysis (also known as Guillain Barre Syndrome) was associated with recipients in close to 1,000 patients.
The fears that prompted the mass vaccination were due to the ghost of the 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed at least 50 million worldwide. In 1976 and 2003 SARS, and again in 2006 with the bird flu, false assumptions were made connecting the memory of 1918 with another potential scourge.
Back in 1976 the prevailing theory was that pigs had been the source of the 1918 Spanish Flu, which was later disproven but served as an impetus for the hysteria at the time. In 2005, the knowledge that the 1918 scary virus was "bird-like" led the fearmongers to point a finger at an equally scary H5N1 virus that was killing millions of birds. But lost in the panic was the knowledge that human pandemics had likely never been caused by an H5 virus before.
In the current swine flu scare the virus is assumed to be a more powerful human killer than it actually is. In reality it appears to losing virulence as it spreads human to human and is not that transmissable, and is NOT becoming widespread.
The vast overreaction to this virus and its potential has severe economic consequences as it did previously in 1976, 2003, and 2006. This time the hysteria may lead to billions of dollars lost to the travel industry, tourism, the Mexican economy, and to closing schools due to hysterical children and overreacting nurses. Vice President Biden's statement that we should all avoid planes, trains, and crowded places was not at all consistent with the very low prevalence of the virus. It made me think he had become disoriented and suddenly thought he was back in 1918! Even President Obama's statement that we should wash our hands (of course we should, they are loaded with bacteria and viruses of all kinds) sent the wrong message that there is far more of this particular virus around than there actually is. (The chance that this virus is on your hands as you read this is extremely close to zero).
Despite the fact that you can't get this virus from eating pork, Egypt is destroying its pigs and several other countries are not importing pigs from the U.S. or Mexico. This is another form of hysteria.
Perhaps the greatest overreaction of all is the new pandemic alert system that the World Health Organization developed in response to the 2005 bird flu scare (an alert system developed in response to a scare??). Though it is reasonable to call a pandemic for an extensive spread of a new strain of killer flu to many parts of the world at once, what is sorely lacking in this alert system is any counting of actual cases or number of deaths before raising the alert level. As a result, we may end up with the first pandemic in history with less than a thousand deaths. Consider that the last pandemic, the 1968 Hong Kong Flu, which was controlled with the help of vaccines, public health measures, and treatments for secondary infections with antibiotics, killed 750,000 worldwide.
It look like H1N1 is another pandemic of mostly of fear - something that is stronger and more infectious than any virus.
_Marc Siegel M.D., a FOX Medical Contributor, is the author of "False Alarm; the Truth About the Epidemic of Fear and Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic."_


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## Madison_Rose (Feb 27, 2009)

Well, the news coverage I've seen - BBC radio and internet - it hasn't been overhyped. The general impression is "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst." This seems sensible to me. Yes, we're _probably_ not all going to die of swine flu, but the outbreak _could_ be serious, like the one in 1918, which started off mild, but got very serious.

It's better to take it seriously now, just in case. Shame about the Egyptian pigs though.


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## alipaige (Jan 8, 2009)

Honestly, I think the hysteria is going to go on for another few weeks, and the swine flu will be history just like every other epidemic scare.

That's just my theory though. Who knows? 
Better to be safe than sorry, I guess.


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## huh (Mar 19, 2007)

Yes, it has been overhyped.

Thanks for the article. It's nice to hear someone with a clear thinking perspective on this. And just as a shameless plug, go pick-up his book _False Alarm_ if you haven't read it, the timing couldn't be better.


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## IllusionOfHappiness (Sep 6, 2007)

Yes. Well, all I know is I'm sick of hearing about it. Pardon the pun. I figure they'll have made a documentary off this in a few months, then turn it into a box office success. *cough*SARS*cough* Not that that was a hit...


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## livinginfear (Jan 31, 2009)

My son's got the flu (I assume it's not swine flu, but who knows.), and I called the nurse just to see what kind of symptoms would warrant a trip to the doctor, and she said basically that this swine flu isn't any worse than any other flu, it's just that since no one has immunity yet, there's the possibility of large numbers of people getting it. That made sense to me. I think it's definitely overhyped. It doesn't sound any scarier than any other flu.


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## LostPancake (Apr 8, 2009)

Depends on what media you're talking about - I haven't really noticed too much hype on the internet. I usually just look at Google News though.


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## Amocholes (Nov 5, 2003)

36,000 deaths in the US due to flu in an average year.
1 death in the US due to Swine Flu.

Do the math!


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## UltraShy (Nov 8, 2003)

Wow, I'm in the 95% majority. This so rarely happens.


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## Just Lurking (Feb 8, 2007)

"Outbreak"... "pandemic"... you know the media latches onto those words... attention-grabbing topics = ratings for news telecasts = why we're hearing about it so much.

So far, yes, it does seem overhyped..


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## downbutnotout (Mar 19, 2009)

"The boy who cried wolf" flu.

Everytime they hype a flu, and its not as bad as they say it is, people wont believe it next time.

So if a really bad flu happens one day, and no-one believes it, we can blame the media!


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## LostPancake (Apr 8, 2009)

Sounds like a good reason to kill your TVs - TV news is really atrocious. I used to love watching TV, but they'd always advertise new shows, and I'd want to see them too. Most shows are on the internet nowadays - I just watch Lost and The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and even that is too much sometimes.


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## Toad Licker (Nov 2, 2007)

I haven't seen any news stations overhyping the swine flu out break, I've seen people on the net doing so though.


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## Lateralus (Oct 28, 2007)

I've been saying from the beginning that this was another over-hyped media event - using fear to get people to keep watching their garbage reporting. It's been done so many times before (Y2K, SARS, Bird Flu, Conficker worm) I don't know who's left to buy into it anymore. The media is like the boy who cried wolf.

Edit: Just noticed Downbutnotout used the "boy who cried wolf" anology too, didn't meant to steal from ya!


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## LostPancake (Apr 8, 2009)

Have you tried Google news? It's kind of bland but it tends to avoid hype. 
http://news.google.com/

It's actually so bland that I often don't even want to look at any of the articles. Which is probably a good thing - I've got enough other things to be doing. Whereas with MSNBC or something I usually wind up reading at least an article or two.


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## Amelia (Nov 24, 2003)

I was going to vote "yes", but having watched a TV documentary recently about viruses, I voted "no". It was pretty scary. Experts on viruses from the WHO, the CDC and other countries were interviewed. They are taking this very seriously. The 1918 flu epidemic apparently started with a relatively small number of isolated cases, then came back with a vengeance. This swine flu may not be killing many people now, but there are no vaccines against it and it could mutate. With people travelling as much as they do, it would apparently be impossible to prevent a killer virus from spreading quickly around the globe.


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## SilentLoner (Jan 30, 2006)

I've said it was overhyped from the beginning. Like its been said, there are tens of thousands of deaths from the regular flu each year.

I don't doubt that a flu pandemic can happen and pose a great threat, but of the cases in the US only a handful of cases have even needed hospitalization.


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## Fairyxo (Jan 28, 2009)

The British Government has started distributing NHS Information Leaflets about Swine Flu, and they're really useful - we got ours in the post this morning.

They explain a lot and, unlike the media has a tendancy to do, they haven't hyped anything up. It's good to know that our Government has been planning for a flu pandemic for years, and the WHO says that our plan is one of the best in the world.


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## solitarymonkey (Feb 15, 2009)

Fairyxo said:


> The British Government has started distributing NHS Information Leaflets about Swine Flu, and they're really useful - we got ours in the post this morning.
> 
> They explain a lot and, unlike the media has a tendancy to do, they haven't hyped anything up. It's good to know that our Government has been planning for a flu pandemic for years, and the WHO says that our plan is one of the best in the world.


we didnt get ours. i was disapointed. lol. heard about it on the radio round my parents, and started looking forward to the postman turning up. yay.. no leaflet :cry
i barely know anything about it. apart from if anyone every accuses one of us at work of having swine flu when we cough/sneeze, that i encourage the staff member to oink/squeel like a pig


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## Fairyxo (Jan 28, 2009)

solitarymonkey said:


> we didnt get ours. i was disapointed. lol. heard about it on the radio round my parents, and started looking forward to the postman turning up. yay.. no leaflet :cry
> i barely know anything about it. apart from if anyone every accuses one of us at work of having swine flu when we cough/sneeze, that i encourage the staff member to oink/squeel like a pig


They've only just started distributing them, and I think we got ours before the rest of the UK because the two cases of swine flu here are in Scotland - and we live in Scotland.


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## nubly (Nov 2, 2006)

Fairyxo said:


> They explain a lot and, unlike the media has a tendancy to do, they haven't hyped anything up.


lol. dispensing leaflets to every citizen is part of over hyping things. what the media is doing is reporting the news about the swine flu too much.


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## Fairyxo (Jan 28, 2009)

nubly said:


> lol. dispensing leaflets to every citizen is part of over hyping things. what the media is doing is reporting the news about the swine flu too much.


Clearly, you have never received a British Information leaflet, and since I have had many, I can assure you that it is actually downplayed rather than overhyped.

Our Government likes to look after its citizens.


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## solitarymonkey (Feb 15, 2009)

Fairyxo said:


> They've only just started distributing them, and I think we got ours before the rest of the UK because the two cases of swine flu here are in Scotland - and we live in Scotland.


but the radio man said *TODAY* :cry Scotland, huh? shows what i know.. i thought, as per usual, it was someone from london.


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## Fairyxo (Jan 28, 2009)

solitarymonkey said:


> but the radio man said *TODAY* :cry Scotland, huh? shows what i know.. i thought, as per usual, it was someone from london.


The first two cases in the UK were in Scotland (from two people who had come back from Mexico), but there are now about 15 cases I think.


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## huh (Mar 19, 2007)

I hate the paranoia this flu is causing. I ended up throwing up last night and I still feel nauseated and have a bit of a fever so I called in sick to work. I received a call back saying that I need to have a signed release from my doctor so that I can come back to work. I mean W.T.F.

First off, I'm not covered by our works health plan and I haven't been to the doctor since I've moved locations about two times now. I guess I might have some extended time off...lol. It doesn't seem to be any more harmful than the normal flu, yet people are panicking about it.


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## Laith (Mar 20, 2009)

No.

The reason we go crazy and expect the worst and take every precaution is because we have learned from the past. Don't forget past pandemics of illnesses that killed millions. Bubonic plauge is one. We had no concepts of quarantining and going to the extent of shutting down the outbreak at its source back then. Thats how it spread so rapidly and part of why it waas so devestating.

When H1N1 started we had no idea what it was or how dangerous it was. All we knew was that more and more people were getting sick, some were dying, and it was spreading. So did we overreact? NO. Count your blessings it is just a derivative of normal influenza.

Also, it mutated so fast and to such a great extent it caused a new series of infections. Will it do it again? If it does, will it be a more dangerous form? We dont know. It's possible.

My major deals with this kind of stuff =) I find most people are horribly misinformed when it comes to issues like this. Just remember the reason deadly pandemics rarely happen nowadays is because of the extent we go to stop it from spreading, and the reason we do that is because history taught us if we dont the result is devestating. Its not overreacting.


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## DeeperUnderstanding (May 19, 2007)

I definitely think it's been overhyped. It's a danger, but not as dangerous as people are making it out to be.


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## Globe_Trekker (Jan 29, 2009)

Yes!

AIDS pandemic: approx. 25 million deaths worldwide since 1981

Spanish flu ( 1918 ): approx. 50 - 100 million deaths worldwide

Swine flu ( 2009 ): 48 cofirmed deaths (45 in Mexico, 2 in US and 1 in Canada)

...so at the present moment they _are_ overhyping it...but they say it might come back this autumn with a vengence.


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## LostPancake (Apr 8, 2009)

Laith said:


> No.
> 
> The reason we go crazy and expect the worst and take every precaution is because we have learned from the past. Don't forget past pandemics of illnesses that killed millions. Bubonic plauge is one. We had no concepts of quarantining and going to the extent of shutting down the outbreak at its source back then. Thats how it spread so rapidly and part of why it waas so devestating.
> 
> ...


Thank you, this deserves to be repeated!


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## Lateralus (Oct 28, 2007)

Laith said:


> No.
> 
> The reason we go crazy and expect the worst and take every precaution is because we have learned from the past. Don't forget past pandemics of illnesses that killed millions. Bubonic plauge is one. We had no concepts of quarantining and going to the extent of shutting down the outbreak at its source back then. Thats how it spread so rapidly and part of why it waas so devestating.
> 
> ...


Those are all good points and I agree with this, except I am saying it was overhyped by the media. The WHO and CDC and other experts in the field were right to caution everyone and expect the worst. Afterall, imagine the outrage if this was now killing thousands and they hadn't raised alerts.

The media however, are not out to protect us, they're out to sell papers and gain viewers. And any time something comes along that can cause even the slightest fear, they blow it out of proportion and report until it's been beaten to death. Is a "Swine Flu Body Count" really necessary on the front page?


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## huh (Mar 19, 2007)

Laith said:


> The reason we go crazy and expect the worst and take every precaution is because we have learned from the past. Don't forget past pandemics of illnesses that killed millions. Bubonic plauge is one. We had no concepts of quarantining and going to the extent of shutting down the outbreak at its source back then. Thats how it spread so rapidly and part of why it waas so devestating.


Comparing swine flu to the bubonic plague is stretching it. The bubonic plague is far more fatal than the swine flu. The bubonic plague kills nearly 50% of people it infects within roughly a week if it isn't treated. As it stands right now, the WHO has listed 3440 confirmed cases of H1N1 with 48 confirmed deaths. I'm sure the number of people who had it might be much higher, but they probably aren't counted because it just seems like they have the common flu/cold and they end up getting better soon so it never gets reported.



Laith said:


> When H1N1 started we had no idea what it was or how dangerous it was. All we knew was that more and more people were getting sick, some were dying, and it was spreading. So did we overreact? NO. Count your blessings it is just a derivative of normal influenza.


Within the half a week to a week or so of it starting there were only a handful of confirmed deaths from this flu. Comparatively, 20,000 or so people die from the flu in the USA each year. That's a few hundred people a week. The quarantining was a ridiculous effort to try to stop something that wasn't much of a threat to begin with. If anything, it attracted great ratings and the news over reported on it and spread paranoia on it for reasons not well rooted in evidence. This has caused overreactions by a lot of people



Laith said:


> My major deals with this kind of stuff =) I find most people are horribly misinformed when it comes to issues like this. Just remember the reason deadly pandemics rarely happen nowadays is because of the extent we go to stop it from spreading, and the reason we do that is because history taught us if we dont the result is devestating. Its not overreacting.


I think if anything history has taught us that modern medicine and quality living conditions go a long way towards prolonging life. The media hyping this flu doesn't stop it from spreading, it just makes more people worried, and usually for the wrong reasons.


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## imt (Sep 22, 2008)

I wish there was a "Hell Yeah" for one of the poll choices.


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## CircularThinking (May 9, 2009)

If the swine flu had hit in the 1300s it still wouldn't even come close to the bubonic plague.

The swine flu is infinitely less dangerous and medical tech and availability is infinitely more available.

Looking back to brace for the future is good but only with good perspective. Without proper perspective of the situation all you end up with is panic.


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## Kelly (Dec 12, 2003)

CircularThinking said:


> *If the swine flu had hit in the 1300s it still wouldn't even come close to the bubonic plague.*
> 
> The swine flu is infinitely less dangerous and medical tech and availability is infinitely more available.
> 
> Looking back to brace for the future is good but only with good perspective. Without proper perspective of the situation all you end up with is panic.


What makes you say this? (What I bolded.) :sus

Have a nice day,
Kelly


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## whiterabbit (Jan 20, 2006)

I got my NHS Information Leaflet about swine flu today. Here's their advice:
1. Cough/sneeze into a tissue
2. Put it in the bin
3. Wash your hands

Also, set up a network of 'flu friends' who will go out and run errands for you so you don't have to leave the house if you're ill. I don't even know what that means. Either you've got friends and family who will help you out when you're ill or you haven't. Set up a network?


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## CircularThinking (May 9, 2009)

Kelly said:


> What makes you say this? (What I bolded.) :sus
> 
> Have a nice day,
> Kelly


Just blind speculation on my part, also I should have said the black death.

Bubonic plague kills 50% of the people it infects, and it's the weakest known form of the black death. The two stronger forms have a mortality rate of 90 and 100%.


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## Kelly (Dec 12, 2003)

CircularThinking said:


> Just blind speculation on my part, also I should have said the black death.
> 
> Bubonic plague kills 50% of the people it infects, and it's the weakest known form of the black death. The two stronger forms have a mortality rate of 90 and 100%.


Yes, but it's a bacteria and can be cured today with penicillin and isn't deadly at all, if caught in time. So technically, swine flu, which is a virus, is more dangerous *today* than the plague.

I'm not sure as to which would be more deadly in the 1300s though, since they didn't know any of that then. That's why I asked. 

Have a nice day,
Kelly


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## CircularThinking (May 9, 2009)

Treatment for both would have been very limited. It would essentially come down to which spread the furthest and how well the average immune system could fight them off.

Swine flu is (as far as I know) spread largely from person to person contact. The population density would have been significantly thinner in the 1300s which would have reduced its ability to spread by a lot. The black death on the other hand spread not just by humans but also through rodents and fleas.

As for which would be the hardest to fight off my assumption is more based on how bad the symptoms sound than actual logic. Skin turning black from internal bleeding and liquifying organs sounds a lot worse than nausea and a cough


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## LostPancake (Apr 8, 2009)

I think the reason for all the arguing in these threads is that people are talking about two different things - one is the current swine flu, which is really pretty minor, the other is the potential for it to become a pandemic and kill millions of people, which is a legitimate possibility, which is why the goverments are reacting with such caution to it. It's a new virus strain and those are what you have to watch out for, and they're doing the right thing by acting quickly to keep it from spreading. The more it spreads, the more chances it has to mutate into something deadlier and more contagious. That's just what viruses do - they don't do any error-checking on their copies, so they mutate quickly.


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## Drella (Dec 4, 2004)

It's getting terrifying. Just this evening, I punched an old lady. I punched her in the face. She tried to wrestle a can of beans out of my hand, and **** that. No. As she tried to get up, she accidentally disarmed the parking brake on her electric scooter and ran herself over. Her wrinkled hand contorted into a vengeful fist and pearls scattered all over the linoleum floor of the Super Wal-Mart. War is hell, lady. I don't know if I'm fully prepared to take out my own family with a bullet to the head, but I may have to. The swine flu is here; the apocalypse has begun.


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## NeedleInTheHay (May 20, 2007)

Drella said:


> It's getting terrifying. Just this evening, I punched an old lady. I punched her in the face. She tried to wrestle a can of beans out of my hand, and **** that. No. As she tried to get up, she accidentally disarmed the parking brake on her electric scooter and ran herself over. Her wrinkled hand contorted into a vengeful fist and pearls scattered all over the linoleum floor of the Super Wal-Mart. War is hell, lady. I don't know if I'm fully prepared to take out my own family with a bullet to the head, but I may have to. The swine flu is here; the apocalypse has begun.


and that about sums it up.


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## Tasha (Feb 10, 2004)

Yes the media coverage has been a bit too much...but today I received an email from my son's school that there has been a confirmed case in his school When it hits this close to home I'm playing it safe and keeping him home for the next few days...am I being unreasonable? yes, no?


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