Portage River Farm

Last week's trip to Mexico was my first venture into that country. I must admit that I had a bit of trepidation in the final days before leaving. The news reports were full of stories about the thousands who have died in the recent wave of drug violence and the problems with kidnappings of foreigners for ransom. Little did I know that one week later everyone would be talking about death in Mexico but nobody would be mentioning violence at all.

I believe it was last Thursday while I was working in Queretaro that the flu epidemic in nearby Mexico City entered my consciousness via a news story on Google. The brief article talked about people becoming sick and was accompanied by images of mask-wearing pedestrians on the city streets. It was all too familiar.

A couple of years ago I was working in China during the avian flu crisis. I was stunned to realize that I had been in some of the same open air markets and been surrounded by the same freshly butchered chickens that had begun killing people. A year or two prior to that, I had been in China when word of SARS had finally leaked out past a government reluctant to admit that it had a problem that it could not control.

The thing that sticks in my mind about these incidents is the journey home. I remember worrying about whether we would be restricted from leaving China and become trapped far from home in a plagued land. I remember the strange sensation of walking past hastily set-up thermal cameras in the airports while the operators carefully scrutinizing each person's image to pick out the feverish. The fear in the crowd was palpable as each person cringed and hoped that they wouldn't be selected from the lineup.

I remember trying to figure out if we could find facemasks anywhere and speculating that perhaps they had little effect on health other than preventing panic. I remember feeling uneasy and vulnerable packed into a cramped and stuffy airplane breathing the same stale air and rubbing elbows with hundreds of other potentially infectious refugees.

This time, the fears of pandemic reached a crescendo after I had returned home. My departure from Mexico occurred so soon after the discovery of the disease that most people did not become seriously worried until a few days later. As I have watched the news and the global panic unfold, I have been monitoring my health and mostly keeping my distance from others until I am in the clear.

Part of the problem has been mixed messages as to the incubation period of the disease. I was initially reassured to read on the CDC website that it was only 24-48 hours. That amount of time had already passed. Then I saw a CDC official on CNN saying that the period was 2 to 7 days! My concerns were further complicated by the fact that my children were already sick with a respiratory infection when I got home. That led to me developing a bit of congestion myself and taking my temperature twice per day to make sure the worst wasn't happening.

Today is day #5 since I got off of the plane and I seem to be fine. It seems increasingly likely that we will all be exposed to it from other sources anyway but at least I won't have brought it directly into our home myself.