When Christmas is coming up and we will be bombarded once more with all kinds of useless lists, reviewing the past year, it’s not going to be Michael Jackson or Barack Obama who will claim the limelight. No, not even Kimberley Vlaeminck, the notorious Flemish star girl. The one getting all the attention will be the world famous celebrity A/H1N1. For those of you frowning in disbelief, you might know him (or her) better as the Swine Flu virus.

Nevertheless, this is still September, and we’re still to receive the full impact of this pandemic. So it might be useful to take a closer look at the way the world – and by this we mean the Catholic University of Leuven, which means the world to all of us – is planning to prevent total chaos, disorder, crisis, riots, revolution, and massive handkerchief shortage.
Let’s assume for a minute that you, dear reader, have not yet been hit by this international inconvenience, and are mostly interested in preventive measures. We will set you at ease with a critical analysis, because no matter what, as students it is our duty to be critical.
The most important measure seems to be the washing of the hands, that basic hygiene ritual which your mommy forced you to go through every time you reached for the cookie jar. You should always use running water and liquid soap and rub your hands thoroughly for fifteen seconds. Stopwatches – with the university logo, of course – will be provided during your enrollment procedure. After rinsing them with water, you should use a paper towel to dry them. A paper towel! Passing the evident fact that drying your hands with paper is very near to impossible, it’s a great frustration to realize that all those years perfecting the art of drying yourself with those hot air blowers you find in public places, turn out to be a total waste.
Another way of prevention is to get vaccinated. At least, it would be, if they were ready. They are being produced right now and are due for the middle of November. This is quite ironical if you know that the peak of the pandemic will be in September-October. There is still the regular vaccine for the winter flu, but getting that one to prevent catching swine flu, is about as useful as thermal underwear in the Sahara desert.

If you happen to cough or sneeze, again the paper towel is the attribute you need. You should dispose of them immediately after using them, which means we’ll all be buying tons of them during these next months. You don’t need to be a conspiracy theory junkie to suspect some sleazy partnership between the pharmaceutical companies and Kleenex.
Always keep one meter distance when you would happen to meet someone visually ill. Once more, the university will come to our assistance by equipping those unlucky sick ones with meter long wooden poles – with the university logo, of course – so as to make it simply impossible to get any nearer to them. A mouth mask, which you probably remember from that SARS hype a couple of years back, is however quite useless in preventing contamination.
But there are still things you can do without catching this terrible nuisance. Since it’s a pandemic, there’s no reason to avoid countries such as Mexico, the United States or the Philippines. You can get the disease just as easily in Leuven. You also shouldn’t stop eating pork chops, sausages, ham, bacon or any other delicious dish, derived from pigs. No need to fear these poor animals, they can’t help it either. You can still pet them if you’d want that. Keep in mind however, that there are some things that you should never do with pigs, even if there was no such thing as the swine flu.
In general, you can follow every of these measures strictly. You’ll find all the information at www.kuleuven.be/swineflu. Ask yourself the question, though, if you’re not just postponing the inevitable. You can avoid all of this by simply looking up a victim, give him a big, passionate kiss and just get it over with! |

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