The swine flu is slowly changing
many social rituals for Americans, reports The New York Times. As it becomes clear that the flu is not going away anytime soon and that some people who get it will become severely ill, many rituals are changing. Catholic and Episcopal churches are telling parishioners not to shake hands during the Peace, and some are skipping communion wine altogether. Communal bake sales and pot luck dinners are a thing of the past and hand sanitizer is now in place at most businesses and schools to try to stem the tide of infection which can have a devastating effect on businesses' bottom lines with massive sickouts.
But, perhaps most disturbing is the swine flu's effect on beer pong: it's been banned at many colleges.
In offices, churches, hospitals, college dorms and schools — and even at yoga classes and in apple orchards — the fear of swine flu is turning age-old rituals on their head. What used to be O.K. is not anymore, as the flu has ushered in new standards of etiquette that can be, in turns, mundane, absurd and heartbreaking.
Students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., are being asked to refrain from playing beer pong, a communal drinking game, after an outbreak of illness that officials feared might be swine flu. Roman Catholic parishioners of the Diocese of Raleigh, N.C., have been instructed by the bishop not to shake hands at the sign of peace, and wine is not being offered for the sacrament of communion.
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At Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Sandy, Utah, pastors have small bottles of hand sanitizer in pockets under their flowing vestments. And new sanitizer stations have been added in the sanctuary.
"Basically, what we're doing, it's not much," said Denise Petersen, the membership director. "But we didn't know what else to do."
According to the experts, little changes like the ones at Good Shepherd may have an outsize impact when it comes to keeping the population healthy.
"I tell you, a lot of people don't know how to wash their hands," said Dr. Maureen Lichtveld, a professor and chairwoman of the department of environmental health sciences at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
Even without the H1N1 virus, flu still kills a lot of people every year. We think many of the precautions should be permanent: like at Whole Foods they provide sanitizing wipes to clean the grocery cart before you use it. After that report that said how germy all grocery cart handles are, we just routinely wipe the cart handle before we use it anyway. Washing hands stops the spread of many illnesses, so it's just good hygiene.
