The initial news last spring about the H1N1 virus was not good. Early reports from Mexico suggested that the disease caused by the virus was far more virulent than the seasonal flu, and seemed to hit younger folk particularly hard. I had read about a private school in New York which was hit hard after students returned from a trip to Mexico. The anxiety level was increasing rapidly as the media reported breathlessly about this potential threat to public health. At that point, we made what seemed at the time to be a pretty routine decision that turned out to be quite fortunate in terms of what it allowed the school to do. Read the rest of this entry »