Is it a late winter cold season, or something else?
As the weather changes and the immune systems of students are depleted by work and stress, classrooms are being filled by croaking, coughing and sniffling. In fact, upper respiratory tract infections have reached an almost epidemic proportion among our student population.
But there are some who aren’t so confident that this epidemic is due to the common cold.
“Unfortunately, we have reason to believe that SARS is circulating around the campus,” Health Center official Irma Dauchteur said. “We know it’s kind of strange, since most of the cases of the virus have been confined to China, Hanoi and Singapore, but all of the signs are there. Students have been showing up in our office, complaining that they can’t take their tests or hand in papers because they’ve come done with SARS.”
Although Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised the public to stay calm and remain in their homes, Dauchteur believes that the time has come for SMU to panic.
“This is a disaster of Biblical proportions, trust me,” Dauchteur said. “You can scoff all you want, but just wait until you’ve got a case of pneumonia and a temperature of 100.4 degrees. You won’t be able to panic then, because you’ll either be too sick or too dead.”
John Hossinfeffer, a sophomore undecided major, is a first-hand survivor of the SMU SARS epidemic. Hossinfeffer came down with “that weird Hong Kong pneumonia stuff” five minutes before his political theory test Friday, and managed a full recovery by Friday evening.
“I walked into the classroom coughing and told the professor that I had come down with that SARS stuff. Then everybody cleared the room really fast,” Hossinfeffer said. “Man, that was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I mean, I know this epidemic is terrible and everything, but as long as its going on, I may never have to take another test again.”
Hossinfeffer previously came down with a case of Anthrax last February during a cultural formations midterm, but was forced to take the test after it was discovered that the white substance he had sprinkled on the blue book was powdered sugar from a donut.
“I’ve heard about the alerts and everything, and of course I watch the coverage on CNN all the time,” said junior business major Sherryl Shabooti, “but I’m not really worried that anything’s going to happen to me. I’m just going to trust that officials and everyone in charge knows what they’re doing, and that this is all going to end really soon. After all, if we start locking our doors and change the way we live our lives because we’re afraid of what may happen, then SARS has already won.”
President Turner, speaking from behind a 10 foot thick steel wall Monday, denied rumors about the epidemic but warned students against touching the Hanoi Chicken in the Umphrey-Lee cafeteria until the source of the food could be traced.
While the surgical masks over Editorial Board’s collective mouths prevent us from commenting on the issue, we have to say that with all the portents of doom, we saw it coming. After all, weren’t we taking our lives in our own hands when we started worshipping that “American Idol?”
Oh – and happy April Fools day.
