A notorious entry point for the flu virus is your eyes

Wherein don't you just hate it when your plague-carrying coworker insists on coming to work with a 103 degree temperature, expelling gallons of snot and phlegm while hacking up a kidney and leaving diseased ridden tissues in every room they enter? Go home and die already, but don't drag the rest of us down with you.



Matt Welch alerts us to a blog about surviving the bird flu and flu pandemics in general: Family Flu Bug. The author turns out to be Matt's mom, "Mary Townsend....Mum's an RN/MSN who used to run hospital nursing departments and has written up a fab little guide about what practically to do if/when someone in your household catches the evil bug."

Here's an example of her advice. What to do when a flu pandemic hits the schools:

CLEAN LUNGS--it's all about spacing

A cough, sneeze or laugh spreads droplets into the air in a three-foot arc around your face. When the pandemic flu is a reality, it's time to rethink desk placement temporarily. Once the pandemic arrives, it will go through your community for six to eight weeks. For this length of time, desks will need to be far enough apart so that middle school and high school kids cannot touch their neighbors' noses, at the minimum. That's about three feet.

Younger children need this space, too. Two first graders touching knuckles at arm's length is a space of about three feet. Probably at their desks they have this space, but not standing in line and not sitting on the rug. Teachers will need to teach the children spacing for both lining up and rug work.

If a child in the class is coughing, she should be separated from the others as far as possible in a "coughing corner." In crowded classrooms that may not be possible, unless the teacher gets creative with the desks of students who are absent that day. At the very least, a cougher should have tissues and a sack to throw used ones in, with alcohol based cleanser available to clean the hands. Perhaps when pandemic flu is a reality in your community, any cougher should be immediately sent to the nurse's office.

I am officially paranoid. Perhaps I should bring in a bottle of bleach water and spray everything down around here.

Hey, Kinks' paranoia lyrics that sound like someone dying of the flu:

’cause there’s a red, under my bed
And there’s a little yellow man in my head
And there’s a true blue inside of me
That keeps stoppin’ me, touchin’ ya, watchin’ ya, lovin’ ya

Paranoia, the destroyer.
Paranoia, the destroyer.

Well I fell asleep, then I woke feelin’ kinda’ queer
Lola looked at me and said, ooh you look so weird.
She said, man, there’s really something wrong with you.