Life Flu By

An elementary school in my children's district was closed today, and will be for a week, due to a possible case of the swine flu. I'm not sure that this is really justified, as we don't do this during flu season (and I haven't seen any indication that this strain is any more virulent than normal). What I'd like to point out, though is this. President Obama has stated that he has been advised that closing the border would be "akin to closing the barn door after the horses are out." Presumably, this is because the flu has already made its way to the United States. If that is the case, wouldn't the same logic apply to school closures? The horses are already out, or perhaps the better colloquialism would be that the barbarians are already inside the gates. If we need to close schools in order to minimize the spread of the H1N1 virus, shouldn't we at least try to close the border? If we don't need to close the border, however, why the heck are we closing schools?

I tend to think that we will find that this is no more or less serious than any other flu, which causes 30,000+ deaths in the Unites States each year - mainly the very young and very old. I could be wrong, but until we see something different about this H1N1 strain, we should treat it like every other flu. If you're sick, stay home - but that's always the case, we just dont' do it enough. This doesn't seem to be enough to disrupt our lives over.