One cuckoo over the flu’s nest

Before you ask me a very obvious question, I’ll give you the answer: No, I am not happy to be dressed this way. Sitting on a beach chair while wearing a hazmat suit and a Mark 5 gas mask is not comfortable at all, especially in the tropical humidity.

Furthermore, people are looking at me like I’m cuckoo. I try to explain that I’m taking a stand against the swine flu.

After all, this year, people I know in the health care industry have been more adamant than usual about telling everyone to get a flu shot.

Don’t ask me if the alarm is, well, alarmist. I’ve got no idea. But if you’re looking for an alarming figure, I’ll note that in 2009 an estimated 151,700 to 575,400 people died from the swine flu or related complications. Yeah, that’s a pretty wide range there, but even at the low end it sure seems like a lot of people.

Oddly enough, it seems to hit younger people the hardest, or so I’m told. That seems contrary to the intuition that the aged are of more fragile health, hence more vulnerable.

The mainland press has been publishing a lot of articles on the topic lately.

As for me, every year I get enthralled with yet another magic elixir of health, the more arcane and exotic the better. Flu scare or no flu scare, I’ll grudgingly acknowledge that I can’t subsist entirely on bacon cheeseburgers and green M&Ms, so I have to make some concession to healthy living.

My potion for this year is a tea made from dried bitter melon. An herb expert recommended this to me.

After I bought a bag of the tea, the expert hawked up a giant gob of phlegm, spat it on the doorstep, and then lit up a cigarette. This was obviously a gesture of emphatic confidence, so I know I’m in good hands.

And I will note something: Despite my germy little nephews coughing on everyone and running their grimy little paws on every available piece of food in the entire house, the bitter melon potion seems to have kept the flu bugs at bay.

Of course, I can’t prove any causal factor here. I’m just going on intuition, the same intuition that tells me that my car runs better after I wash it. Which, by the way, it does, so my powers of correlative perception are not to be doubted.

Many readers will be familiar with bitter melon, since it’s common in the tropics. I’ll confess I have not acquired a taste for it as a food. But the tea, made from the dried fruit, makes for a mighty savory brew.

In fact, on the health front, bitter melon has received some interesting attention. Some studies have even indicated it has anti-cancer properties in test tubes and in mice. That’s good news for you mouse collectors out there. I haven’t, however, seen anything about human trials yet.

Meanwhile, whenever the flu gig amplifies concerns about how germs spread, I use it as a reminder to pay attention to where I eat when I am out and about. I travel too much sometimes and I get lazy, tired, and hungry. I’m not a clean freak, but even a slob like me can’t help but notice that some restaurants seem determined to be filthy.

For example, the popularity of latex gloves produces some interesting practices, since the idea seems to be that if someone wears the gloves, then everything is OK. Last year I saw a latex-gloved restaurant employee cleaning the men’s room, and then, without changing gloves, that employee went back to the food preparation area and made sandwiches for customers. I have to admire the efficiency of that approach, but I’ll spare myself the honor of being a participant in it.

Those flu germs have to build a nest somewhere, but I hope they’ll skip my little branch of the world.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to take my hazmat suit to the cleaners. I prefer light starch since I always like to look my best, even when I’m at the beach.

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