Swine flu scare lessens as area schools reopen

Late yesterday afternoon, the swine flu scare officially ended at my house.

Not that we were all that scared to begin with, but the "pandemic" hit home for us -- specifically my 8 1/2-year old bundle of joy -- in the form of an unscheduled spring break.

It seems that a fourth-grader who attends my kid's school came down with a confirmed case of the flu (we never heard for sure whether it was of the swine variety). School officials, following the lead of other administrators around the state and the nation, declared on Sunday afternoon that school would be closed for at least a week.

"Well, looks like it's a full week of day care," we thought.

Not so fast ...

Sunday evening, we got a call from our after school daycare provider, telling us that students from my child's school were "quarantined" until further notice.

As you can imagine, this double-whammy led to some parental panic. With the help of a niece and some scrambling, we were able to get through two days without much pain or inconvenience. My little one even offered to have us give her quizzes and assignments. "It will be like home-schooling," she said.

We never really got around to quizzes and assignments and the whole thing came to an end yesterday afternoon. U.S. health officials retracted a recommendation that schools close. They admitted that the outbreak was milder than feared and basically conceded what we had thought all along -- what sense does it make to close 726 schools across the country if those kids are going to be allowed to spend time at shopping malls, parks, arcades, baseball stadiums and other public gatherings?

An hour later, Milwaukee Public Schools announced that class would resume today and I knew our suburban district would follow suit. Fifteen minutes later, I got a "robo-call" confirming what I suspected.

I totally get the "better safe than sorry" argument, but closing a few schools didn't really seem necessary. I'm not going to rip the county health department or anyone else involved with the decision, but the entire episode makes me wonder how effective our response would be in the face of a true outbreak.

Could what happened in the past few weeks make people less likely to follow orders the next time we face something like this?

Does anybody else remember when we got a terror alert every few weeks? We haven't had one in a while.