And Still I Rise

Last Thursday night the Minister of Health announced to the nation that St Vincent and the Grenadines had recorded its first case of H1N1 formerly known as swine flu. The twenty eight year old woman had arrived in St Vincent from Canada and complained of feeling unwell. After being hospitalised her samples were sent abroad for testing and yielded a positive result for H1N1. Even though I no longer have the same doom and gloom thoughts about the virus I felt a bit uneasy knowing it had reached our shores. I knew immediately that every little sniffle, sneeze and cough I experienced would trigger off thoughts of H1N1 and the accompanying flu shots. In that I was not alone as I soon discovered my friends and co workers were demonstrating more than a healthy share of paranoia. It was rather surprising to realise that many of them thought H1N1 was a certain death sentence. Note to authorities: There is still an awful load of educating to do. Seeing that we are at the high point of our Carnival celebrations I expected to see more masks than usual as part of the precautionary measures. I, was quite unprepared for this pun on Swine flu as demonstrated by some Jouvert revellers early this morning. Sometimes, you just have to laugh at serious stuff. Oh, Jouvert was fabulous-great music, great company and all round good vibes.

# posted by Abeni @ 4:11 PM