Vacation is here, 3 days early.

OK, it's not vacation. I have been ordered to remain at home and under quarantine because I came into contact with a person testing positive for the H1N1 Influenza virus.

So here I am, 9:40 in the morning, writing my blog and thinking about going back to bed. After all, what else will I do other than sleep while I wait for WoW to come back online.

All kidding aside, there are some rather uncomfortable realities at work here that make this whole affair rather unwelcome.

First is that my laptop is at work. While this isn't in and of itself a problem, there are some files on there that I need to continue work on a powerpoint presentation I'm to give at this years JET orientation.

Next is the fact that my friend Fran is coming on Saturday. I don't suspect there will be any difficulties, but I'm knocking on wood and taking my temperature every few hours just to be sure.

After that is the fact that I have asthma. In the US, I've read that 1 in 3 patients diagnosed with the swine flu has asthma, and that this is a veritable risk factor whose ultimate symptom could be death! YIKES!!

Thankfully, no symptoms yet, and if my asthma starts to get twitchy, my awesome doctor, with ingenious foresight, prescribed me a couple of days worth of Prednisone.

The last thing of course is the possible parallels with the 1918 Spanish Flu. According to Wikipedia, "[i]t was caused by an unusually virulent and deadly influenza A virus strain of subtype H1N1" and there were two waves. The first wave started in March, and "the epidemic resembled typical flu epidemics." But there was a second, deadlier wave that occurred in August of that year, where "the virus had mutated to a much more deadly form." This is what infected 500 million people and killed some 50-100 million of them.

Our pandemic started in April, and so if the pattern follows, we'd see a second wave in September. With news of a new Tamiflu-resistant strain, coupled with the fact that September is notorious around the world for being a month in which more people suffer asthma attacks, this whole pandemic thing has gotten me just a little bit worried.

Maybe someone can explain this...

...because I totally do not understand it. I'll label this under lulz for now...

EDIT: Thanks to Rob for clearing this up for me. However, it still remains under lulz (I think...).