Posted by
AudiR10TDI on Monday, April 27, 2009 1:54:18 PM
Toronto (April 27, 2009) -- When I was a whole lot younger, and medicine was more art than science, quarantines were something everybody knew well. When somebody woke up feverish, bleary-eyed and most especially itchy, the doctor was called and more than likely he pronounced Measles, Chicken Pox, Scarlet Fever, or some other contagious disease had hit the household and then he added, "You can expect the Board of Health around this afternoon." Sure enough, the man with the big yellow sign with QUARANTINE in black letters was soon hammering on the porch and everybody inside was stuck with one another's company until the doctor gave leave and the sign came down. We kids thought it was kind of cool to have that sign on our house -- it meant that nobody could come in and our friends and relatives had to talk to Mama through the closed window or even better by semaphore (until we got a phone) and nobody could talk to us at all. Of course it also meant that all five of us were likely to come down with whatever it was that started the Quarantine, and that Mama was trapped with us for a month until the All Clear was sounded, when we would be fumigated and scrubbed within an inch of our convalescent lives and finally given a certificate to come back to school.
Five years ago our city suffered an outbreak of a virulent and deadly respiratory disease called SARS. The typical socialist knee-jerk response was denial that anything was happening, refusal to implement anything like a quarantine and pray that it would all go away. Forty people including nurses and medical personnel had died before quarantines began to be ordered, and it took one communicable man with an attitude whose appearance at work regardless caused his 350 person plant to be closed down for two weeks before the police started enforcing that quarantine and finally the dying stopped.
Two years ago a major mumps outbreak occurred at a university in the Maritimes. With typical socialist forethought, the school eschewed quarantine and sent the students back home to spread their germs broadcast throughout the country. Those who came back to the GTA were given instructions that mumps was dangerous and they should quarantine themselves until the infection period was past. "You're not the boss of me!" they shrieked and immediately went clubbing, sharing their germs boardcast and causiing friends and strangers alike unnecessary suffering, sterility and damage to sight and hearing.
Now it's Swine Flu, which so far is confining itself mainly to Generation Yners and which has already killed more than 100 people and sickened 16,000 more -- of the generation who refuse to believe that disease can kill or cripple them or their friends and neighbours, not to mention the people they jam up against on the subway or shove their way past into the grocery store. Quarantine? Get real! "You're not the boss of me!" they will shout as they take their germs to the hockey arena, the night club, the grocery store, the restaurant, and the subway station. "Wash my hands? Make me! Carry a handkerchief? In your dreams! If I want to cough and sneeze all over you, that's my right! And who are YOU to tell me to wash my hands? How about the blood of the First Nations you've got up to your elbows? Get outa my [expletive] face, you [expletive]! IGOTTARIGHT to do and go anywhere I please and YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!"
Having lived through contagious illnesses of every hue and cry, and seen school friends and their families die of or be crippled by same, I have a different view. I have to admit I am kind of enjoying seeing the IGOTTARGHT generation going without work and losing their houses, cars, boats and cottages when they find out that what goes up always comes down and doesn't care whom it hits. I wish it wasn't going to take the same kind of two-by-four upside the head to teach them that germs operate just the same way. You may look a germ in the eye and tell it "You're not the boss of me!" but that germ knows better. And just like the modern day racing driver who jumps out of his car and starts yelling that the guy he just hit tried to kill him, there are ways these days of tracking the accident or the illness back to you.
So in case any of you are listening, Yners, when somebody tells you that it's time for a quarantine, do as you're told for once and go to your room. After all, you will still have your binkie, your computer, your webcam and your twitter to keep you company.
Not to mention your germs.