University's Swine Flu Lexicon Dubs Sick Students 'Pigs'

Swine flu is serious stuff. But Johns Hopkins University figures a little humor might make it easier for students and staff to take to heart messages about prevention and proper care.

So some folks in the public affairs office of the Baltimore-based university compiled a tongue-in-cheek lexicon to help educate people on campus about H1N1.

For starters, students sick with swine flu shall now be known as "pigs," making freshmen "piglets" and those who comply with orders to stay in the dorm "pigs in blankets."

Alcohol-based sanitizer is "hog tide," and henceforth "Boar War" will designate a college's all-out push against swine flu.

 

We talked with Dennis O'Shea, a Hopkins spokesman, to make sure the university's Web site hadn't been the target of some sophomoric prank. Nope, he said, the list is legit and was even sent around in a daily email to students, faculty and staff.

The whole thing got started when O'Shea sneezed into his sleeve, just as public health officials recommend, and a nearby colleague called it a "sleeze."

O'Shea and the rest of the Hopkins PR staff were then off to the wordsmithing races, taking inspiration from the popular "Mindset List," put out by Beloit College each year. That mind-blowing compendium, for us oldsters anyway, says the current crop of college freshmen have never known a world without GPS-navigation systems, for instance.

So how did the stuffed shirts in administration react to the PR shop's idea? One administrator thought it was in poor taste. But the medical affairs people and the dean of students liked it and gave O'Shea the green light.

Hat tip to science and medical writer Nancy Shute, who teaches at Hopkins and alerted us to the funny business via Twitter.

Health Blog Question of the Day: What barnyard terms did the brainiacs at Hopkins overlook?