Jordan Shenhar ’13
Staff Writer

Despite the public’s skepticism, swine flu is a highly dangerous and contagious disease.

Although it may be true that swine flu was exaggerated by the media last spring, H1N1 mutated into a more potent virus over the summer. Because it contains DNA from swine, human, and avian flu, humans have little to no natural immunity to it.

That’s why more than 20,000 people have been hospitalized with symptoms of swine flu. Over one thousand Americans have been killed by swine flu since April, almost one hundred of which were children.

This may not seem like many deaths, but most of those deaths have occurred in recent months.

To make matters worse, the disease is spreading exponentially in forty-six states.

That being said, no one at Staples needs to go insane over swine flu. Connecticut is one of the four states where swine flu has been relatively contained. Some districts have closed schools because of H1N1, but Westport has had such a small number of cases to date that that would be overkill.

Everyone should simply follow the guidelines given by Center for Disease Control and Prevention and their common sense.