Here is what I learned: there is Dengue Fever and then there is Dengue Fever.
A guy at work mentioned that his dad was hospitalized in Australia after being bitten by a mosquito in Vietnam. “He’s got Dengue Fever. He’s just miserable, poor guy.” He chuckled.
I put my hand over my mouth, horrified. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, he’s got a rash, and muscle aches … and a bad headache.”
And in a few days he’ll die because his intestines will liquefy and pour out his ass, I thought, do you not KNOW this? Instead, I asked, “Are the doctors wearing biohazard suits?”
“No, just masks.”
So now the doctors are dead from Dengue Fever, I thought, maybe the whole hospital. The whole city. It could happen. Ebola wipes out entire cities, why not Dengue Fever?*
Son of Patient Zero seemed morbidly chipper about the whole thing, so when I left the conversation I looked up Dengue Fever and found I had confused it with Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever. That’s a later stage that only appears in 5% of cases.
By the time I found him to apologize, my friend had called his Dad in Australia and made sure he was okay, no doubt because this nut job at work had freaked out just hearing about it.
Gary was outraged I had made that mistake, particularly since we’d just watched the episode of Naked and Afraid with the contestant who caught Dengue Fever, and his intestines seemed to be intact.
*This is factually wrong, of course, It’s transmitted by mosquitoes. Quite the expert I am, today. Not so much yesterday when talking about it.