New Yorkers take swine flu in stride

NEW YORK — Having survived blackouts, transit strikes, terrorist attacks and a brush with municipal bankruptcy, many New Yorkers such as Josephine Kelly regard swine flu with a resigned, bemused calm.
"You learn to adjust here. You don't have much of a choice," shrugs Kelly, 60, preparing for a vacation flight to Jamaica that, she admitted, had her a little worried.

"But what's going to happen is going to happen," she says, "and life goes on."

She was standing in a pharmacy parking lot, near the heart of the flu's outbreak in the USA: Fresh Meadows, an affluent suburban district in the eastern part of the borough of Queens.

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To her right, she could see St. Francis Preparatory School, where many of the USA's first flu cases were confirmed last week after some students returned from spring break in Mexico.

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Behind her, just a few blocks away, was Public School 177, site of several cases that Mayor Michael Bloomberg says are expected to be confirmed as swine flu.

"It feels like we're surrounded here," said Donna Jeffries, a family court employee who was walking Mr. Sphinx, her feisty Yorkshire Terrier, in the park behind St. Francis' building.

She says there seem to be fewer cyclists and joggers than usual over the past few days. But, like Kelly, Jeffries says she has no plans to change her routine — where she shops, whom she talks to, how she lives.

Mayor: Don't worry

That's the right attitude, Bloomberg says. "Everyone should go to work and go about their day. No one who is planning to visit New York City should think twice about it," he says.

"You can't stay inside. You've got to go out. He has to go out," says Carmine Rastelli, 87, a retired truck driver who was walking his dog Spike across the street from P.S. 177.

Rastelli's approach? Stay out of crowds, do your food shopping in off hours and wash your hands. "It's all in the hands," he explains. "The biggest thing is the hands."

The neighborhood Duane Reade drugstore has a special display for the flu-wary: six shelves of sanitary wipes, liquid hand soap, latex gloves, cone masks, rubbing alcohol, spray disinfectant and facial tissues.

Lili Dai, 70, wore a face mask as she walked past P.S. 177.

It was not exactly as it seemed, according to her husband Kemin, who says his wife is bothered by allergies and also wears a mask in the winter against cold air.

Both St. Francis, the nation's largest Catholic high school, and P.S. 177, a school for autistic children, remained closed Thursday because of the flu. Three other Catholic schools also were closed in the city, although the city health department says no cases have been confirmed among their students.

Brother Leonard Conway, principal of St. Francis, says the school's 45 students confirmed to have swine flu were recovering — "hopefully home resting and doing online assignments."

City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden reported 16 additional probable swine flu cases in the city. Federal officials previously confirmed 50 cases in New York, most of them at St. Francis. link...