As a recruiter, Emily Yeager greets a lot of people every day. But there’s one handshake she’ll never forget.
It was early 2010, during the height of the swine flu outbreak — the colloquial term for what was then a novel variant of the H1N1 influenza virus — and Yeager had a meeting with a job candidate. At first, it was business as usual.
“I shook his hand,” Yeager, now 33, tells The Post.
As the interview went on, it became clear that the candidate wasn’t well: He kept sneezing and blowing his nose. Still, Yeager, then 23, wasn’t too concerned — until several days later, when she woke up horribly sick, unable to eat and hot to the touch.
“It was worse because I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t even have a thermometer,” says Yeager. She sent her boyfriend — now husband — to pick up ibuprofen and “the biggest Gatorade” he could find.
They weren’t working. So, hours later, she dragged herself to the doctor — where she was promptly given two bags of IV fluid and diagnosed with swine flu.
On Sunday, a Manhattan woman became the state’s first-known case of the coronavirus, which has claimed nearly 3,000 lives globally to date. It’s got many locals in a state of panic, but for those who have survived past pandemics, including swine flu, which killed more than 12,000 Americans in 2009, the coronavirus is a disturbing reminder that history repeats itself. Yeager, who now lives in Bed-Stuy with her husband and their 3-month-old son, says she’s “freaked out.”
Experiencing a pandemic firsthand “was a freaky, scary thing — it was the worst week ever,” says Yeager, who says she was immobilized by the illness. She was told that she had to let the virus “run its course,” which included taking over-the-counter remedies, such as Dayquil, to treat her symptoms and quarantining herself at home for an entire week. Her boyfriend, whom she was living with at the time, “didn’t really want to be around me,” she says. He “kept his distance” and the pair slept in separate quarters for the next seven days.
A decade later, she’s learned a thing or two about pandemics. For one: She’s vigilant when it comes to hand-washing.
“If I’d washed my hands after meeting the candidate, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten sick,” says Yeager, who is avoiding crowded subway cars, going so far as to get off the train if she encounters anyone visibly ill. “Be conscious of sick people [and] touching your face.”
Dan Marzouk, a 41-year-old father of four from Plainview, Long Island, also has experience from the front lines of the swine-flu outbreak.
After suddenly becoming feverish in December 2009, he called a doctor friend, who instructed him to go to the hospital the next day.
But despite a fever that had spiked to 103 degrees, it took more than a day for Marzouk, who had a pre-existing heart condition, to receive a diagnosis of swine flu.
Dizzy, feverish and lacking any appetite, he went on to spend a week in hospital quarantine.
“In the hospital, an aide will [usually] come in to give you medicine or give you food. They wouldn’t do that for me,” he said.
Instead, food was placed in an antechamber, and Marzouk would then fetch it himself. (Doctors and a nurse would briefly check in on him daily and administered Tamiflu, an anti-viral drug.)
He was allowed no more than one or two visitors a day — all of whom had to be in good health and take precautionary measures: wearing a gown, mask and gloves, and limiting their stay to a few minutes. His wife, Atara, who was seven months pregnant at the time and also given Tamiflu as a precaution, could only speak to him over the phone.
“It was really scary,” says Atara, a 39-year-old ICU nurse.
Although Marzouk was eventually sent home after his fever broke, the experience still gives him chills.
“Don’t panic, but don’t be afraid to go to the doctor,” says Marzouk, noting New Yorkers’ penchant “to power through everything,” including signs of sickness. (According to the World Health Organization, symptoms of coronavirus include fever, cough, shortness of breath, and breathing and other respiratory difficulties.)
Molly, another swine-flu survivor, agrees that prompt medical attention is crucial.
“I’m the kind of person who will deny any kind of sickness until I can’t anymore,” says the 37-year-old Upper West Sider, who asked not to use her last name for privacy reasons. “But when I had to crawl to the bathroom, I figured I should probably get to a doctor.”
That’s when she received an official swine flu diagnosis at Lenox Hill Hospital, where she presented with “weird” vitals and blood pressure that vacillated from high to low.
“I thought I was going to die and actually didn’t care if I did — that’s how bad it was,” she says.
Now, with the threat of coronavirus looming, she’s wearing gloves on the subway and carrying “four bottles of Purell.”
Still, she’s not letting it turn her into a shut-in.
“Corona is real, but the flu is much worse this year,” she says. “We native New Yorkers don’t scare too easily.”