Commuting in the time of swine flu

A short post today as I actually have work to do tonight (good or bad?) and should get to it instead of unloading the dishwasher, making my lunch for tomorrow, hanging up the clothes on my floor, and opening all my spam mail . . . general procrastination.

Larry Brilliant, an epidemiologist and general visionary (aptly named!) from my hometown that I know both as a parent of a childhood classmate, as well as a contact for a high school project I did on small pox, wrote in the Huff Post this week about swine flu. “Love in the time of Swine Flue” is an introduction and assessment of the pandemic as well as his experience with the disease itself, having contracted it in the spring. It is a great piece, and the first in a three part series about the disease.

Living in a city that harbored one of the higher rates of swine flu the first go round, there are reasons to be nervous about swine flu in the coming months, and Dr. Brilliant confirms this completely. As a commuter, the T is probably an ideal harbor for an influenza-type virus which I subject myself to 30 minutes twice daily, not to mention the gym, which I’ve been deciding is probably the secondary but lethal cluster of germs that I pass through in my daily life. Add the total saturation of college students in Boston spreading in every direction, and I think that I better start to carry some disinfectant in my purse!

Keep you posted on Dr. Brilliant’s second and third pieces.