So Puneites (people from the city I am currently in) are in a total panic over swine flu. Our institute just declared all classes closed for 2 weeks. Everywhere you see people donning blue surgical masks. Some places (such as Staples) seem to have made them

mandatory for employees. The funny thing is that it seems that the masks are sort of seen as some sort of talisman. People will regularly pull them down for talking to each other when they would presumably be at the highest risk for catching the virus.

Given that H1N1 has a grand total of 10 deaths in India so far, why so much emphasis on this? You are far more likely to get something like malaria, dengue, AIDS, tuberculosis or any number of other infectious diseases. Moreover, the disease isn’t even so bad considering its mortality rate is rather low. Presently, I think I will just chill a bit more, get some more work done now that teaching is suspended and watch others make a spectacle of themselves trying to talk through masks and then pulling them down and talking as usual.