Fever is a symp­tom. It is not a dis­ease. Yet, there are many dis­eases which con­tain the word fever in their name. Some have half a dozen names. Malar­ia, for ex­am­ple, was called swamp, jun­gle, marsh, and in Guyana, black­wa­ter fever be­cause it can turn urine black. This was quite dif­fer­ent to black fever or dum­dum, which has noth­ing to do with MA­GA vot­ers and is bet­ter known as kala azar.

Ty­phoid was called en­teric, cesspool, au­tum­nal, ner­vous and Lent. Lent, be­cause the mal­a­dy was as­so­ci­at­ed with eat­ing in­fect­ed fish dur­ing the Lenten sea­son.

Dengue caus­es se­vere body aches. Its pop­u­lar name is there­fore break­bone fever, but it was com­mon­ly called red, sev­en-day and dandy fever. Se­vere mus­cle pain made peo­ple walk with a stiff, ex­ag­ger­at­ed pos­ture, like a dandy.

You have the well-known: rheumat­ic, scar­let and hay fevers. Old time ty­phus was known as camp or jail fever, but al­so goal fever, which fits with the times.

You have the scary ones that CNN loves to talk about: Ebo­la, Mar­burg and Las­sa.

Then you have the re­al fun­ny names: yel­low fever, be­cause you turn yel­low; Pel-Eb­stein, which sounds like a promi­nent law firm; Rocky Moun­tain spot­ted fever, some Tri­nis claim they get this when they go up El Tu­cuche, “it so high!”; African tick bite fever, which you can­not treat with African sea co­conut cough syrup; and our very own Ma­yaro fever,” which is ap­par­ent­ly ac­tive in Man­aus, Brazil, where FI­FA con­struct­ed a $270 mil­lion foot­ball sta­di­um for four World cup games.

Which brings us to the cur­rent fever. For­get trench or shin­bone fever. For­get Chikun­gun­ya, Kare­lian or Sind­bis fever. Boohoo or Mu­ma? Nah! For­get any oth­er kind of fever. The on­ly one of in­ter­est to Tri­nis in the last months was World Cup Fever or WCF.

This fever is epi­dem­ic, com­ing in four-year waves. The symp­toms and signs are un­mis­tak­able. There is the sud­den ap­pear­ance of flags on cars whose own­ers have been heard to speak in tongues, re­sem­bling Por­tuguese or Ger­man. Dur­ing the acute phase of the fever, there comes a gen­er­al malaise, a lethar­gy, a per­son­al “Je ne sais quoi” at­ti­tude of the pa­tient, ex­cept when France is play­ing.

There is al­so a lack of in­ter­est in pol­i­tics, sex, church and feed­ing the dog. Headache and dizzi­ness from too much tele­vi­sion and beer is promi­nent. Ring­ing of the ears is dis­turb­ing and re­quires wife and chil­dren to shut UP! Red eyes, bleary with morn­ing yam­pee, oc­cur in over fifty per cent of cas­es. Al­so com­mon­ly seen: sleep­less nights won­der­ing how to get back the mon­ey bet on Brazil, sure ting, de obeah man say so. Sore throat (scream­ing), hoarse­ness (same thing). A feel­ing that “yuh troat clos­ing up” on you, “sumt­ing squeez­ing, Doc!” That is your out­side woman when she re­alis­es you spend last Fri­day mon­ey on Ar­genti­na.

The fever is low grade, more of an “in­side fever.” Some of our Venezue­lan neigh­bours, who have much ex­pe­ri­ence in this field, call it a “que­bran­ta­do” and treat it with the re­spect due those who suf­fer for the saints or have ties to evil spir­its of the sort, ac­cord­ing to cer­tain high func­tionar­ies, ap­par­ent­ly wan­der­ing around La Tri­nite harm­ing lit­tle chil­dren and for which prayer is said to be the an­swer. A char­ac­ter­is­tic sign is called “park­ing the bus.” This is man­i­fest­ed by episodes of in­tol­er­a­ble an­guish when one’s team is un­able to score. An­oth­er sign, sure­ly pathog­no­mon­ic, is the “ole” sign, heard when two suf­fer­ers wear­ing the same “jussy” meet up with each oth­er.

From a pub­lic health stand­point, the amount of al­co­hol con­sumed in­creas­es the in­ci­dence of vi­o­lence, ex­cept in coun­tries host­ing the World Cup where FI­FA has de­creed that noth­ing of the sort can hap­pen be­cause their spon­sors sell al­co­hol. In Eng­land, how­ev­er, po­lice call­outs to in­ci­dents of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence rise by a third af­ter Eng­land lose a match, but al­so rise by a quar­ter af­ter they win. We await the lat­est fig­ures with bat­ed breath.

There are oth­er health ef­fects of World Cup Fever. In 2006, Ger­man re­searchers claimed that view­ing a stress­ful foot­ball match more than dou­bles the risk of a heart at­tack in sus­cep­ti­ble men and rec­om­mend­ed pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures. In oth­er words do not sup­port T&T.

But an un­ex­pect­ed side ef­fect of WCF, not re­al­ly to Tri­nis who have our Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence, is the rise in births nine months af­ter the WCF. Re­al­ly, this car­ries the idea of “cool­ing” to a ridicu­lous de­gree.