Word: seem
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...calls flying about on all sides and focused on the various messages Harvard University Dining Services was sharing with me. Through table placards, video screens, and posted advisories, HUDS was doing everything it could to save me from getting H1N1 through nifty, cheerfully presented tips. Such tips, however, seem more intended to comfort their makers than they are to actually stop H1N1’s spread...
...Swine flu is an unavoidable risk on campus, and I suppose remaining mindful can only improve one’s safety. Yet the number of advisories and preventive measures seem better suited for a game of “swine-flu dodging”—so let’s play. To win your first point, you have to make full use of the Purell dispenser by the entrance. I have overheard students comparing the dispenser to its counterparts in other Houses. “Lowell’s totally doesn’t work...
...messages aren’t good for much more. The advice they offer is confused and largely superficial. Suggestions that students wash their hands before eating are common sense and should be applied before every meal, not just during swine-flu season. The health messages it prints often seem to arise more out of a desire not be held liable than out of genuine concern. Nutrition fact placards disappeared when some people complained, for instance, but they later came back—sort of—in the form of printouts available somewhere in each dining hall. (Even The Crimson...
...can’t blame HUDS for trying, but what do such notices actually achieve? Tips like using a fresh plate for seconds do not seem particularly effective in a packed dining hall like Quincy’s. Anyone who has lunched there knows the basic crowd dynamic: Right after noon and 1 p.m. classes, the place is more like a battle scene out of “Gladiator” than a serving station. Then, in the middle of each hour, with no classes disgorging hungry, recently sleeping students, it quietly recovers while the tables strain under full capacity...
...crowded eating area itself seems the most likely way that disease would spread. Signs warning about things like plates seem laughably inadequate in this context. Follow these tips, they seem to claim, and one will be safe from danger. But if the student next to you fighting to reach the last pizza slice has H1N1, then you may be bound for UHS’s quarantine rooms, regardless of whether his plate is clean or whether he earned his point for Purell...