Many schools are not taking any chances of hearing their students have the H1N1 with reports of deaths. They are being careful with reports of flu symptoms to just go ahead and close the school Reason? You lose lots of money with that many students being absent. If you close the school, you can make up the day when students are healthier. Schools are being very cautious. The superintendent should not have said what he did about his training. All superintendents are trained to deal with any kind of emergency with good judgement. He used good judgement here in my opinion, but he could have told the press what I'm telling you.

I just heard on the news that our local hospitals are also limiting visitors due to the flu epidemic .. no one under 12 can visit, encouraging people with flu-like symptoms not to visit, limiting the number of people accompanying patients in for testing, etc. I'm in IL too.

They said they're going to be calling the families. So they are investigating. None of these kids is in the hospital..without that it's hard to tell if it's h1n1 or just some regular flu/cold. Obviously if the kids are at home the parents don't feel that they're sick enough to take to the doctor/hospital. It's most likely that it's just a regular flu and nothing more. It is flu season after all.

Presumably the medical authorities are making such tests - but they take about 48 hours to perform, which would take until Thursday. In the meantime, the school apparently has a flu outbreak and waiting until the hospital called back with test results would give two days more for the uninfected to catch it. And even if it is only "ordinary" flu, if 900 students have it, surely it is better not to spread it around. In fact, even if it is not flu but some other respiratory infection, 900 already sick would seem a fairly large warning sign. The exact diagnosis and consequent treatment is for the medical authorities: as far as the school is concerned, they have a large-scale infection of something, and are responding appropriately,

Well, they are now!!

They will Ed. Further, those who were so quick to pooh-pooh the swine flu information provided earlier in the year will be singing another tune. Last year this time 7 flu cases were reported. This year it is over 5000. Stay tuned my friend. :(

The high school doesn't have authority to investigate. They can't go and order medical tests for their students or even get the results of them. I'm sure local (and probably not so local) health officials were called in to find out what was going on. They would have the authority to see patients medical files, to, if necessary ask students to get tested. The school would be informed of anything that they needed to know, and most likely only on a general basis. They don't have the authority to know that there kids had swine flu and these were just sick, and these were playing hooky, and these were very hung over from a large party and pretending that it was the flu and not a hangover. They would be told, this has been going around the school, the rest of the school should get tested, these steps need to be taken, etc. And btw, the public would be told less then the school. I'm not sure why you think that you have the right to know about 900+ kids you've never met and what is going on medically in their lives, but believe it or not, you don't. And just because someone isn't reporting to you, isn't giving you answers, doesn't mean that they aren't doing their jobs.