Mo you are right about the media sensationalizing things, so now when things happen people take it with a grain of salt, having experienced the sensationalism of the world is ending the world is ending before and in the end, nothing happened. And now, something could happen the media is pumping it upworse than normal as usual and people are ignoring it, because of the past over dramatiziing the event, much like the old story of "The Boy Who Called Wolf" or "The Little Red Hen shouting, The Sky is Falling! The Sky is Falling!"

One of my local ER's has handled a confirmed case of swine flu, and sent the victim home to recover saying "he'll be fine." A hotline set up specifically to answer questions about swine flu was swamped for a few days. The local media commented at length about how "northeast Ohio was on the map due to the swine flu pandemic" but they rarely referenced what the actual symptoms might be.

Because of this I draw two conclusions:

1) Avoid hospitals unless really necessary. They're full of sick people. (Thank you W.C. Fields).
2) The media cares more about the fact that people are paying attention to them than it does about actually informing their audience what to look for as far as signs of a potentially deadly disease.

I think we're missing the point -- the Mexican government, police, military, and legal system are all massively corrupt. Narcoterrorists are largely in charge of the country. People are kidnapped all the time, for too many reasons to count.

I would avoid Mexico right now, swine flu or not!

Paul that's an intersting point and I share it. However, most people would not cancel their nice planned vacations for such tiny little problems.

Anyway, until it stirkes next to them, most people think that problems happens only to others.

One of the suspected case in France was a nine years old girl (hopefully not infected) who had come back from Mexico. When she started to have fever (two days after her return) what did her parents? The obvious, of course, they sent her to school.

I'm not of the panicking type, but in that case, I would have called the 15 (french phone number equal to your 911).
- To be sure.
- To avoid emergency rooms.
- To avoid taking the chance of infecting my neighbour's kids.