„Swine Flu“ – H1N1 is getting back at us

The Situation Room – not with Wolf Blitzer but a regular student. What’s happening out there with that funny virus that nobody seems to take serious but is obviously enjoying itself?
The situation: A school of roughly 1000 students in Germany – a regular high school, grades 5 through 13, is close to being shut down by this funky flu! Allegedly (take this by its literal meaning – I have no official prove for these statements), about 30% of Year 8 are our of school, 25% of Year 9, some folks from Year 11 and 12 plus an adittional confirmed four from the graduation form 13. Additionally, some 3-5 teachers are ill with the virus. If you add these numbers up and are, like me, a fatalist, you could end up with as many as 10% of the whole school being ill. Call this extreme or not – some people are still not thinking about being vaccinated and continuously pose a threat to society by providing themselves as viable hosts for a virus which is due for a mutation. How I get to these bold statements? Here it is:
First things first – the virus. A virus is a, by most definitions, non-living thing composed of a phospholipid or protein outer layer with some DNA or RNA in it, maybe even some enzymes or ribosomes. What makes it unique are the receptor proteins which might be attached to its outer shell. Those are like a name – on a cellular basis. How does a virus work? It infects your cells by injecting its genetic material into them and makes them into zombies, creating more of the same type of virus. To do so, it the cell replicates the DNA or RNA of the virus many times to put it into the newly created viruses. In this process – as always if you try to copy something (ever stood in front of one of these Xerox beasts???), mistakes happen now and then. BOOM! DAMN! How did that happen? A mutation occurred right on the spot. Nothing spectacular, if it were not to make the virus more lethal or more virulent, which could eventually happen, becoming even more probable as more people become infected and more viruses are created.
All further reasoning is based on this process. If viruses could become more dangerous by mutation and mutation happens more often as more people are infected, the consequence of more infected people is a higher chance for H1N1 to become really deadly – like the black death or funky things such as that. Continuing along these lines, people are far less likely to become infected if they have received a dose of vaccine, thus, they are less likely to contribute to making the illness more serious. Therefore, obviously, getting vaccinated is an act of civil responsibility since it tries to inhibit H1N1 to become a killer baby virus. In turn, not being vaccinated is plain naive, unless you have serious reasons like being pregnant or having problems with the vaccine.
To get back to the situation at our school. Many a person is missing these days. Even those not ill at all are avoiding the place to simply avoid infection – and they are still not closing for seven days! „OH no, you didnt say that?“ Well actually I did just state that closing school would serve a good purpose. Those already ill could get better and not be spreading the virus, latent infections would not cause any spread and anyone getting the virus from somewhere else would stay out early enough so as to not spread it further. Problem is: exams and the loom and gloom of our Abi – graduation- exams in April is omnipresent these days for 13th graders. However, a week of missed lessons will most likely not kill our grade and as an appropriate reaction to a pandemic as we are experiencing now, Duesseldorf might even consider postponing the exams?
Why am I so bothered about all this? One week ago, nobody was infected. Now, its probably around 100 people in 1000. Its funny how classes get more and more empty, how friends are just not there and leave brief IMs: „Oink oink – it got me“. Won’t anybody act?