The Turmoil of Changing Terminals: The Effects of Swine Flu

With the arrival of the swine flu in the U.S. both airlines and the people travelling on them are left in a panic. Airline managers are screening the public as well as their employees while travelers are altering their vacation plans in light of the current situation. Public alerts have been issued and the danger level of this potential epidemic has reached 5 on a scale of 6. As such, many people, myself included, have been forced to cancel or change our air travel habits and plans.

Being a constant traveler, the swine flu has greatly affected my schedule for the worst. As my career calls for it, I find myself constantly jetting in between states, at my own expense of course. The recent unveiling of this new scourge has not only interfered with my travel plans, but has also required me to completely change it altogether. Any and all flight routes that had been partitioned with a stop in New Mexico had to be painstakingly edited out of my agenda so as to avoid the imminent pandemic. Although it would seem to most people that such fears would be a little over the top, many, if not all of my airline trips had an ETA of at least two hours, more than enough time to contract a virus.

Being a journalist I find myself having little to no choice in this matter and as such I have no choice but to continue with my schedule. As such I have been tediously researching areas of interest and disinterest in perspective to the recent outbreak so as to avoid them if possible and what truly has derailed many of my plans is the number of areas afflicted. The rising number of patients in many of the states including New York and Texas does nothing to assuage my fears and neither does the virulence of the sickness. This is especially noticeable and dangerous when most air travel is conducted in small, close-quarters cabins and in proximity to dozens of potential carriers. This, of all things, has been my primary motivator in altering my agenda as it has caused me to completely rethink the situation and variables involved. For now I find myself unable to do anything else in light of the incoming storm, but I feel that I should do as much as I can to avoid becoming yet another negative on the statistics chart.