Some time-honored traditions — working sick, flying sick, going to school sick — are in question as the nation seeks to fend off the spread of swine flu.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in its most specific calculation to date, estimated Thursday that the number of Americans who came down with the H1N1 virus in the first wave of the disease (April to July) could have been as high as 5.7 million. Swine flu is widespread in every state but Connecticut, New Jersey, South Carolina, Hawaii and the District of Columbia.
As a result, schools are questioning perfect attendance awards, employers are looking twice at sick-day limits, and airlines are encouraging the ticketed ill to stay on the ground.
Everywhere, the cry is the same: Wash your hands. Cover your mouth. Use your sleeve. On the street, the handshake is being supplanted by the fist dap and the elbow bump.
At the doctor's office, the competition for an appointment and a vaccination is intense.
"I've never seen it like this. ... That name, H1N1, sends parents into a panic," says Angela Gordon, administrator at Dunwoody Pediatrics in suburban Atlanta. "We've had a lot of verbal abuse."
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in its most specific calculation to date, estimated Thursday that the number of Americans who came down with the H1N1 virus in the first wave of the disease (April to July) could have been as high as 5.7 million. Swine flu is widespread in every state but Connecticut, New Jersey, South Carolina, Hawaii and the District of Columbia.
As a result, schools are questioning perfect attendance awards, employers are looking twice at sick-day limits, and airlines are encouraging the ticketed ill to stay on the ground.
Everywhere, the cry is the same: Wash your hands. Cover your mouth. Use your sleeve. On the street, the handshake is being supplanted by the fist dap and the elbow bump.
At the doctor's office, the competition for an appointment and a vaccination is intense.
"I've never seen it like this. ... That name, H1N1, sends parents into a panic," says Angela Gordon, administrator at Dunwoody Pediatrics in suburban Atlanta. "We've had a lot of verbal abuse."
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