With all of the attention the mystery illness that is spreading through Manhattan High School, it’s easy to think that this is a rare occurrence, but that is far from the truth.

Illnesses spread through schools all of the time. In 2009, H1N1 spread through schools and the general population like wildfire, and Staphylococcus infections often spread through high schools, including MHS. What makes the “plague” different is that its origin and what it is exactly are still unknown, even weeks later, but MHS is not the first to have an illness cloaked in mystery spread throughout the school.

From California to New York countless schools have had a norovirus take out a sizeable portion of the school population. Noroviruses are a classic example of quickly spreading illnesses but there are more and less common mysterious illnesses that have spread throughout schools.

In 2012 followed the story of a developing outbreak in Le Roy, New York. In a small high school with approximately 600 students, 18 people reported random, uncontrollable outburst of twitching.

No one knew what was going on. Many people doubted those infected, and did not believe them. They believed that people were simply making it up to get out of school for awhile.

The school gained attention nationwide as conspiracies of what was causing this illness spread no real answers were immediately given to those who were sick. Eventually those infected were diagnosed with conversion disorder, a mental condition in which a person has blindness, paralysis, or other nervous system (neurologic) symptoms that often cannot be explained by medical evaluation, by Dr. Laszlo Mechtler.

So while the illness that has been plaguing MHS for the past weeks may seem like a rare occurrence that could only happen here, it turns out that MHS isn’t so weird after all, and it could be more mysterious.