H1N1 and Me

H1N1 and Me

After about ten days, I think I’ve finally come out the other side. Two weeks ago or so, I began having fourth graders coming to me with dour faces, saying, “I don’t feel good.” One look told me that the children were sick, and I sent them along to the school nurse. I’m guessing that I sent perhaps 8-10 kids home over the span of the week from my classes. All had a high fever and spraying cough. Fourth graders don’t always cover their cough very effectively, and I found myself the victim of cough spray on several occasions. I began almost intravenously feeding my hands and body with hand sanitizer, but I knew I was doomed.

Interestingly, I read recently from a UVA medical study that hand sanitizers are effective against germs, but not against the common rhinovirus. In fact, viruses rather love the alcohol in the sanitizers.

According to the Center for Disease Control, “the symptoms of 2009 H1N1 flu virus in people include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Some people may have vomiting and diarrhea.”

My experience with H1N1 went something like this.

Two Fridays ago, I felt myself coughing a bit while I was watching the Northside vs. Allegheny football game. The next morning, I was coughing more than normal. I figured, however, that I was simply experiencing seasonal allergies. So I went to the Virginia Tech vs. Boston College football game. I coughed my way through. Later that evening, at a friend’s pre-wedding event, I began to cough more intensely and frequently.

The next morning, I crashed. My cough instantly deepened, and I felt my head explode. My temperature bolted to 102 degrees, and I found myself staggering through the house.

Being the dedicated, foolish teacher, I pasted myself in front of a computer for about four hours Sunday afternoon and began writing lesson plans. By this time, I had figured out that I had caught it, and I was doomed. Interestingly, my cough became more sporadic. When I coughed, I coughed hard. But I didn’t cough very often. In fact my nose wasn’t even stuffy.

Early the next morning I dragged myself out of bed at 5:30 and drove to school to set my room up for the day. That accomplished, I drove home and collapsed for the rest of the morning and early afternoon. My fever hovered around 102 and lowered with Advil. Monday afternoon well after school was over, I went back to school and spent about 2.5 hours making lesson plans for Tuesday. I came home and crashed for the night. Tuesday was a carbon copy of Monday except I was able to sleep in since I had already done the plans. Later in the day, again, I went in after school to make plans for Wednesday, another 2.5 hours.

By Wednesday, I detected some lessening of my fever and my headache had gone away. The cough was a bit more intense, however. The fever left me mostly for good by midday. I decided that I would be able to return to school for Thursday. In retrospect, I should have stayed home both Thursday and Friday. Never have I been so spent at school. I found myself sitting and dragging myself from task to task with absolutely no energy. I was miserable. On Friday afternoon, my fever came back, and I was into regression.

Luckily the weekend came, and I was able to sleep and do nothing for an entire day. No planning. No thinking. Nothing. I did finally go to the doctor on Saturday morning, and he assured me that I had no signs of a secondary infection although he told me it would take a while for me to get rid of the cough. I began to feel stronger and better. Sunday was an even better day. While the cough continued, I began to feel like my old self.

Now that I’m on the backside of this health event and now that I have the official symptom list for H1N1, I realize that I got off relatively easily. I never developed a sore throat, runny nose, or upset stomach. For that, I’m thankful.

While I battled H1N1, I knew of several other teachers who were also experiencing it. One friend was dealing with her hospitalized child. Thankfully for her, the child is on her way to recovery.

So when people ask me whether they should get the vaccine, I tell them without hesitation that while I am not a doctor, I believe strongly in the vaccination. I’m thankful that the county is providing it free of charge to children and staff. Even though I’ve most likely had a personal relationship with H1N1, I plan to get the shot.

~Thom Ryder

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Rob Jones, VEA's Government relations director, sent an email out today calling attention to a dire threat facing every one of Virginia's educators during the next General Assembly session.

In the General Assembly session ahead, one thing we can count on is that the benefits offered by the Virginia Retirement System will be under attack. In these tough times, legislators will be looking under every rock to find ways to cut costs.

Thanks to a Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission(JLARC) report released a year ago, seven proposals are up for consideration, including eliminating the current traditional pension plan and replacing it with a 401(k) personal risk account.

According to Rob, many of our members simply do not understand the true benefit and promise of our current system. Why? Perhaps they haven't experienced the real ebb and flow of investment life. More likely, they have never invested at all.

Do you realize that before Roanoke County Schools revamped our 403-b investment program last year, about 18% of our employees took advantage of the program? When we switched over to the Hartford management team after an intense selection process necessitated by IRS tax law changes, participation has dropped to 9.6%. Folks, the industry average for 401-k (similar to 403-b) participation in the business world is 79%. Given time and a strong effort by our Hartford representatives, Kyle Scully and Rob Mangano, this percentage should slowly grow back.

As a career educator, I fully understand why it’s easy to let retirement thoughts slide. We face so much in our daily PRESENT lives serving others that it's hard to carve out time to think about our own futures.

My wife and I are that unique educator couple. We both teach elementary school and have been investing in 403-b's since the mid-1980's. We began investing simply because we wanted a full retirement option when we decided that teaching was over for us. We wanted the ability to live comfortably and maybe travel a bit.

We were confident to develop an investment plan because we knew that we had two components in place already, the defined benefits offered by Social Security and VRS. With that security in mind, we scrimped and saved pennies from our meager salaries (I started at $10,500 a year) and strode out into the investment world. We developed a relationship with a financial planner in whom we have grown to trust implicitly. We knew that, between VRS and Social Security, we could expect a constant sum of money that would allow us to live. Our 403-b’s would just be icing on the cake and allow us to experience life.

Like many others, the 403-b dream has been mixed. We’ve invested faithfully for over 20 years in solid funds but the inherent risky nature of the product doomed us in the down times. The technology bubble burst bashed our accounts and the recent crash sank us.

Here’s what I’m getting at. We knew the risks and were willing to take them because we had security in our hip pocket. Now, some legislators want to take my security away. They want to turn my DEFINED BENEFIT RETIREMENT PLAN into a PERSONAL RISK ACCOUNT.

On top of switching VRS from a defined benefit plan to a personal risk account, the General Assembly is eyeing the giant pile of money being held by VRS in our name. They covet these billions. Even though these billions were earned by us and were kept in guarded trust for us, sometimes in lieu of salary increases, this money is a very tempting pot of gold that could cure the state of what ails it in the short-term, so they believe.

According to Rob’s analysis of JLARC’s report, a retiring teacher can expect a 48% REDUCTION in benefits from VRS. 48% . I’m trying hard to understand why someone could possibly think that idea is acceptable or advised. Perhaps such people are taking advantage of Math SOL 4.5 (Front End Estimation). 48% written as a decimal would be 0.48. Using the front-end method, underline the front digit and drop the rest 0.48. Hence 0.48 can accurately be estimated as 0 or 0% using front-end estimation. Of course, most of the rest of us would simply round off 48 to 50 and advertise the 50% reduction in benefits (Also Math SOL 4.5).

That’s right, there are people who don’t care and may even be blind to the fact that educators will endure a 50% cut in benefits if we go to Personal Risk Accounts. I fully expect Rob to share more information in the coming weeks of how exactly these accounts will impact us.

We need to educate our colleagues about both the benefits of the current system, which provides a guaranteed benefit for life following retirement, and the shortcomings of the 401(k). The current issue of Time magazine includes an excellent article entitled, "Why It's Time to Retire the 401(k)."

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1929119,00.html

Please read this article and share it with friends.

Our current pension system is worth fighting for.

What Rob said. Some things you just have to fight for. But, hey, maybe you think we should all just be thankful to have a job.