Implicit and explicit meaning in Alina Selyukh's swine flu article

¶ … H1N1 flu and its impact on the students of a school in Lincoln, Nebraska. On a particular Wednesday, this school had 221 sick students who reported flu-like symptoms and this rate dropped to 191 on Thursday. The author clearly conveys how this threat can spread quickly among students and the options available to the school Principal to tackle this situation. The article is well-written and it is mostly centered around the happening of Pius X Catholic High School. The author has given a lot of importance to the actions taken by the Principal and his opinion on how the situation should be handled.

The implicit message of the article is clearly about how the school is completely unprepared to face this health threat. The school did not even have a sick room and out of necessity, an administration room had to be converted to a sick room for the students who were suffering from flu-like symptoms. The school did not have an emergency nurse either and this again brings out the glaring deficiencies and unpreparedness of this school to handle health threats like the H1N1. This strain of flu was widely prevalent in the country and it is vital that every school and public institution takes the necessary precautions even though the threat level was reduced. Taking action after the occurrence of H1N1 among its students is more of a damage control measure. Though the Principal did the right thing by sending students home and contacting the CDC and the local country health department, he could have seen it coming and could have had a health plan in place. Maybe this event can be an eye-opener to prepare for health problems as soon as the threat becomes known.

There is a wide gap between the explicit and implicit message that was conveyed through the article. While the explicit message is the prevalence of serious health conditions like H1N1 that can quickly spread among students, the implicit message is about how the school is completely clueless when such an unfortunate event occurs. This contradiction was obvious when the author describes how the administration converted one room into a "sick room" that can be used to treat students by a nurse who is not familiar with the school's procedures. It also goes to show the callousness or ignorance of authorities who do not take any steps to educate the students and prepare the staff and the school administration despite getting repeated warnings from health departments about the H1N1 flu and its symptoms.

In this article, the author's primary source of authority is the interview from the Principal of Pius X Catholic high school in Lincoln, Nebraska and the experience of Taylor and her mom Laswell. The level of information that the mother was aware and the precautions she took to prevent it from spreading to her other kids is another example of the preparedness shown by a parent and this is a stark contradiction to that showed by the Principal. The entire article revolves around the opinion and incidents in this particular school and it is difficult to extrapolate it to other schools in Nebraska or the U.S. because of the lack of extensive facts. The author has used little outside sources with only some references to the CDC website and other sources that describe the symptoms and prevalence of H1N1 flu.