A startlingly viral epidemic has spread throughout Newton South's recently graduated class of 2006. Researchers studying the phenomenon say that college is taking a much larger toll on the group of young graduates than was expected, although even the initial predictions were dire.
“It's just shocking,” said an epidemiologist who is also the parent of a student whose life has been claimed by college. “The black plague had a death rate of two thirds, at the most. The loss of life in the affected group is almost 100 percent. It's unbelievable.”
Doctors say that early signs of college regularly showed up in students as long as two years before it took its final toll, while some rare cases showed symptoms as many as four years prior. “We didn't think anything of them,” said one local pediatrician about the early signs of college. “It just didn't occur to us that such commonplace symptoms would develop into an epidemic, especially so long after they first showed up.”