Reply #7: It's my opinion that this is simply

[SheilaT]

the typical overreaction to anything and everything that has been occurring ever since September 11, 2001. Possibly the intentions are good. The potential for a deadly outbreak of flu (or something else) is always out there. But what I seem to be seeing right now (and I'm fortunate enough not to have a TV so I miss a LOT of stuff)feels like hype well beyond any real danger here.

We are rapidly approaching "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" phenomenon. We've seen it in the past with hurricane evacuations. Someone only needs to get caught once in a 20 hour nightmare of evacuation and no hurricane to decide to ignore the warnings next time.

In the case of disease outbreak hysteria, I don't know for sure what the down side is. The warnings to avoid all public gatherings are only minimally effective at best. Wearing face masks are likewise of limited value. What does help is hand washing. Thorough, frequent hand washing. Sick people should stay home. All too often sick people don't, they go off to work, to school, to the movies, to grocery stores. And spread disease merrily along the way.

A personal story on the above. Some years back, when my sons were about 4 and 8, we went off one Sunday out to a tourist area and spent a fair amount of time mingling with the crowds, when I suddenly realized the younger son was blossoming out in chicken pox. He'd been exposed two weeks earlier, and so this wasn't much of a surprise. I hustled them home as quickly as I could, and on the drive back, my older son volunteered that he'd noticed the spots several hours earlier, when we were eating breakfast. Out in a public restaurant. Older son also broke out later that day. They were both at maximum contagion at that point, and chances are some kids broke out with chicken pox two weeks later and the parents had no clue exactly how or where they'd been exposed.