What goes around...

I spent most of this afternoon in bed.

I've been doing a lot of that lately, overcoming something or another I picked up somewhere along the line. I'm guessing I probably contracted it over the weekend, but who knows. It first started causing problems on Tuesday morning when I was working at the store and noticed my tonsils swelling. It's been awhile since that's happened! I had Wednesday off, and by Thursday what I had was really more of just a standard cold. Today, Friday, I'm probably 90% of what I usually am. Still, it pays to eat well and catch up on sleep. That isn't always easy for someone like me who gets up at three most mornings and tends to ingest little more than a thousand calories on many days.

When I checked out for lunch today, I read in the Des Moines Register a first page account of a mystery illness at an elementary school in the east part of the city that sent twenty two children and a couple of teachers to the hospital.

Apparently, it struck mid-afternoon, about one thirty or so. Eighteen students were singing in music class, when some began to feel ill and before long, everyone was sick and fleeing the room. Three of the twenty two were in other rooms. 911 was called, and emergency responders rushed to the school to check it out.

Right away, carbon monoxide poisoning was ruled out as a cause. Carpeting was being installed elsewhere in the building, but that, too, was dismissed as a possible reason for the sudden onslaught. One student, an eleven year old girl, had been standing on the top tread of the risers as the class sung when she claimed that she started feeling 'hot and like I was going to faint'.

All the students that scrambled to the lavatories were later corralled in the school's main office, and apparently one person was held for observation overnight at the hospital.

Authorities report they have no clue as to what's going on here.

Let's take a look at this.

It's easy to rule out CO poisoning. An electronic detector with a digital readout, which many of us have seen or even have in our homes under the Nighthawk label, handles that with ease.

What carbon monoxide does to a person is the very same thing that oxygen deprivation does. This is the next possible cause...sort of. In the winter, oxygen depletion is a very real concern. If you work in a space that is overly airtight and you have appliances or heating equipment that consumes oxygen, this can be a real problem. The atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and about 1% everything else. If the oxygen concentration where you're at falls below about 19 percent, you're not going to be doing very well. Carbon monoxide, if you have it leaking into your room, displaces oxygen. If you breathe it in, your blood will absorb it right away and will have no capacity left for carrying oxygen, and you'll essentially suffocate. Same thing happens if you breathe any other gas, such as helium or nitrogen. If you're not getting any oxygen, you're in a heap of trouble! Truth be told, oxygen depletion generally happens if you run a wood burning stove in an otherwise buttoned up cabin or tent, or a kerosene or propane heater in a garage that's been thoroughly sealed up. Sometimes it can occur in a new, very airtight house. This usually involves running the bathroom fan and/or the clothes dryer and lowering the air pressure in the house. As a result, air from the outside starts to come in through the chimney. This doesn't hurt much, as long as the furnace or gas water heater isn't running. When that happens, then you're back to a CO problem more than anything else. All the schools I attended were quite drafty and had enough people coming and going through the doors throughout the day for oxygen depletion to be much of an issue!

So now we're looking at some kind of virus or other pathogen. Outgassing from building materials tends to be problematic, but that's in new or newly remodeled buildings and usually comes from carpeting, upholstery, and Oriented Strand Board. Most public schools and other institutional buildings tend to not have so much of those. Something biological, perhaps?

Absolutely. But it wasn't any one virus, per se.

This is a great example of what is likely to be Mass Sociogenic Illness, a.k.a. 'Mass Hysteria'.

Personally, I like sociogenic illness myself. Mass hysteria makes me think of fear, or panic. As in, 'AAAAAAGGGHHH! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!'. That's not at all what's happening here.

Humans have developed some very interesting features through the millenia. We're really quite amazing. Our immune systems are absolutely fascinating. How they work is worth considering:

If you're getting sick, what are the symptoms?

Feeling tired and weak are common, but there's more. How about running a fever? The body raises its temperature in an effort to 'cook' the viral invaders. Runny nose? Flush the microscopic interlopers right out, that's the plan. And, of course, there's a couple of other ways we humans sometimes unpleasantly expel nasty stuff that we just don't discuss in polite company.

The immune system handles all of that, and for most of us, it does it pretty good. Finally, the fight is down to a very tiny scale and white blood cells go mano a mano with the remaining viruses and the body starts to create antibodies that specifically target that virus so that it won't get far should it ever return, provided it's that same specific virus. Absolutely amazing!

We people not only have this incredible self-preservation mechanism built into us, but we're also very social animals that do a great deal of our communicating non-verbally. Unless we block it out, as we often learn to do, we can tell a huge number of things about those around us just by observing them. Posture, expressions, movements, and many other subtle clues come into play.

Being pack animals by nature, the way we evolved was usually in tribes or at least large families. When a decent food source was found, like an abundant supply of berries or a slain mastodon, everyone dug in and chowed down.

Of course, anyone older than about ten years of age has probably figured out that sometimes things look like they're good to eat, when in fact, that's not really the case. Especially in the wilderness.

Part of what has made us and many other creatures survive as a species is the ability for one to send an irrefutable, irresistible message to one or more of the others. A scream is a great example. Tell me you can ignore a sudden, blood curdling scream that comes out of the blue. You can't. You might blow it off, but only after you've looked around for a moment to at least figure out where it's coming from. It's definitely going to get your attention for at least a moment. Yawning is often cited as being one of these messages. Giving someone a dirty look definitely counts. THAT sure as heck sends a message! So does crossing your arms when someone else is talking to you.

Now, let's apply this to Mass Sociogenic Illness. In a tribal dining situation, if suddenly one of the eager diners violently spits out a mouthful of food, what is your reaction going to be? Now, what if that same individual was to turn, double over, and expel much more than a single mouthful? What message does that send? BAD FOOD! GET RID OF IT!

I can just about guarantee you that most, if not all, of the others will be following suit shortly thereafter. It also happens quite often with motion sickness. When one person vomits, it can become a real challenge for the others around them not to. Sometimes the only real way a person can ignore these things is if they're completely insensitive to other people.

In the Des Moines elementary school, I'm certain there was a virus behind this. The thing is, there was probably more than one, and each student likely had picked it up at different times during the past week. These things take time to develop, and often you're contagious and spreading them a good day or two before you're showing any symptoms and know you're sick. I'll bet it was inevitable that a good number of those kids were either not going to be coming to school today (Friday, 29 February) or they'd be home and in bed most of this weekend. Most were probably not feeling too hot anyway and anxiously waiting for school to be out so they could go home and 'crash' for the evening. And then, eighteen of them were standing shoulder to shoulder next to each other on risers in music class, a portion of them a few feet off of the floor. Yes, it starts to get warm in there. And many people start to get dizzy just a bit when standing on something higher than the floor around them. If you're just trying to keep hanging in there, these things really don't help you any, do they?

All it takes is one person to finally succumb, and at that point they've pretty much 'said' what most everyone else was merely 'thinking'. One person 'went over the edge' and the others were right behind...

When you're in good health, the power of suggestion is, well, powerful. When you're about an inch from being down on your knees, however, sometimes you just don't have a chance!

Stay healthy,

The TiGor