The Australian fever

There’s an Australian that has Northern Italians feverish. This year already 23,330 in Lombardy and 4,660 in Milan have been in bed with her. Its this seasons strand of influenza and they have named it l’Australiana (scroll down for the article, the second sentence actually reads “A lot of people are under the covers with the Australian”).

Why is it called The Australian? Because sufferers of it feel like doing nothing but drinking beer and watching sports? Do they call in sick to work “I’ve got The Australian, I’m going to the beach”?

No as far as I can find it is a strain A/H3N2/Perth – hence the moniker l’Australiana.

But it calls into reflection the perceptions surrounding different countries. For example would someone feel less worried that they have ‘The Australian’ Flu than say if it was called ‘The Somalian’? And if it was called the Chinese you’d instantly think that a billion people are going to get it by tomorrow. The German Flu would be a tough one. The English Flu would more likely bore you to death. The Jamaican Flu sounds like it might even be enjoyable. The Nauru Flu would just be embarrassing, I mean who has ever heard of the Nauru Flu? Almost as bad as the Tuvalu Flu. Much cooler to have something like ‘The Russian’, that just sounds big and dangerous. “I’ve got The Russian, I need a year off”. If you got the North Korean Flu you’d immediately lose all your Facebook friends. And if the Iranian Flu spread to the US war would be declared.

Apparently The Australian is not too severe. According to Fabrizio Pregliasco of the Institute of Virology at the University Of Milan, its been around for a couple of seasons so people are getting used to it. This tarnishes Australia’s usual competitive nature. Australians are famous for, and don’t shy from boasting about, the fact that we “punch above our weight” in the international arena. Well influenza is a tough game to do well in. We’re competing with Swine and Bird Flu just in the recent past. Hong Kong Flu killed a million in 1968-69. But the heavy weight champion is the Spanish Flu which decimated 50-100 million in 1918.

Its a tough ask for such an affable larrikin as the Australian Flu, whose sufferers just grin and bear it and are heard mumbling “yeah she’ll be right mate”.
 

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Tags: australian flu, l'australiana

This entry was posted on January 11, 2012 at 3:34 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.