Has Fear of H1N1 (Swine Flu) Changed Your Routine?

From Altar Wine to Beer Pong, Flu Fears Curb Life’s Rituals

Yolanda Ray works in the kind of place where people “really love to eat and snack.” Colleagues are quick to tempt one another, she says, with homemade dishes and sugary treats laid bare for the taking on desktops. Before the age of swine flu, the arrangement was fine. But now, employees at Rudd Equipment in Louisville, Ky., have new company-wide directives: No sharing of unwrapped candy. Cakes and pies must be cut and wrapped at home. Food needs to be served with utensils. She added, “Sometimes I feel like the swine flu police.”

In offices, churches, hospitals, college dorms and schools — and even at yoga classes and in apple orchards — the fear of swine flu is turning age-old rituals on their head. What used to be O.K. is not anymore, as the flu has ushered in new standards of etiquette that can be, in turns, mundane, absurd and heartbreaking. Students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., are being asked to refrain from playing beer pong, a communal drinking game, after an outbreak of illness that officials feared might be swine flu. Roman Catholic parishioners of the Diocese of Raleigh, N.C., have been instructed by the bishop not to shake hands at the sign of peace, and wine is not being offered for the sacrament of communion.

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As many of you know I am kind of a germaphobe. I also have the immune system of a 2 day old infant. Yet, I am not freaking out about H1N1, because I'm already doing most of the stuff the CDC and various health officials recommend in so far as hand washing and cleanliness.

I think it's time for the religions who do communion from one chalice or cup to change. The first time I went to a church where everyone drank from the same cup I was about 7 years old and I was HORRIFIED! Even then I knew that 100 people drinking from the same cup was a great way for germs and sickness to be transferred. I know that the Priest or Reverend wipes the cup with a cloth which has allegedly been soaked in alcohol or some disinfectant after each sip. I just don't buy that it is really disinfecting after the 10th person or so. As for the 'Passing of the Peace' , I have never liked that tradition just because of the germ thing. During cold and flu season I find myself making mental note of just who is coughing and sneezing into their hand so that I know NOT to shake their hand at the 'Passing of the Peace'.

In the church in which I was raised, we took communion from individual mini-silver chalices. None of this cross-contamination business happens in any of the dozens of United Methodist churches I have attended since childhood. In my current church they use miniature clear plastic cups. Kind of like the Nyquil cup, but smaller. I like this because they are disposable. There is no question that so-and-so didn't wash & polish them properly; because you get a new one each time.