Swine Flu Most Likely To Strike Students With Incredibly Improbable Number Of Dead Relatives

Story by Egon Sinclair 

| Published Sep 8, 2009

The perfectly rational wave of hysteria courting this year’s flu season swelled even further this week, following a report pinpointing individuals who are at a greater risk of contracting the dreaded H1N1.

According to the medical brief released Tuesday by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Health Center, students who’ve recently lost multiple grandparents, great aunts or distant uncles will almost assuredly fall prey to swine flu sometime this semester, with the risk of infection nearly tripling if those tragic losses were clustered during last year’s midterms or finals week.

Additionally, students writing papers that a.) are due the day after Boozeday Tuesday, b.) need to be longer than 10 pages, or c.) they don't give two shits about were advised to take extra precautions.

Thus far, reported cases of the illness have been held to a manageable 7,000, something UNL officials are quick to attribute to the newly adopted attendance policy. Under the new terms, professors are urged to relax rigid attendance guidelines in cases where students appear to be sick with swine flu.

“We’re incredibly lucky instructors have been so amiable toward the changes,” said University Communication's news manager, Kelly Bartling, her voice muffled by a surgical mask left over from the 2003 SARS disaster. “There were some skeptics, sure, but if we’d listened to them, the whole campus would be infected, instead of a totally inconspicuous one in four students.”

Fortunately, most professors were on board with the policy from the get-go. Robert Brooke, a composition and rhetoric professor in UNL’s English Department, said it gives students with oddly timed family crises a bit of breathing room.

“Take a student of mine, Sasha Novak,” Brooke elaborated, applying a liberal dose of hand sanitizer after each sentence. “First her dog got hit by a car, and then, two days later, the same vehicle exploded for no reason. Both events prevented Sasha from getting to class on time. And, as if that wasn’t enough, her beloved grandmother passed on that very weekend. Swine flu takes an awful toll on the elderly, it seems.

“So, when Sasha sent me an email informing me she was suffering from chills, aching muscles, limb or joint pain, diarrhea, a possible loss of appetite and a body temperature of 38°C/100.4°F, I figured I could cut her some slack. It’s just a shame that damned disease is costing her $179.75 per credit hour.”

The modified attendance policy only covers potential swine flu infections. Even if afflicted with other viral or bacterial onslaughts, such as Ebola, consumption or H1N1’s deadly cousin, bird flu, students will still be expected to attend class, Bartling said, burning her dress pants because some kid with a runny nose looked at her funny.

Otherwise, she added, some less than scrupulous individuals could twist the mass panic gripping the university to their own advantage.

“Some students could abuse the system, I guess, but I never would,” said Andrea Klein, a sophomore News Editorial major juggling 21 hours. “I mean, I was up all night writing up this expose on Nebraska pork farmers for Beat Reporting, but I'm not too tired to go to class.”

Klein then apologized before hacking a Dixie cup’s worth of mucus into a Kleenex. She attributed her sunken eyes, incessant coughing and general “looking like Hell” to her heavy class load.

“Welp, gotta go,” she said, each word interrupted by a sneeze that shook her tiny frame and displaced another frazzled hair. “Next class is in the lecture hall downstairs and I hate when a hundred people see me walk in late."