Expected to reach pandemic levels

How many of you out there just finished washing your hands? Do you have a bottle of germicide in your pocket/purse? Have you seen people who are wearing those ridiculous masks to not catch this new H1N1 virus?

At what point did fear become the motivator of cleanliness? We should all be mindful of bacteria that can make us sick and watsh our hands/clean up after ourselves regularly. There comes a point where we do things compulsively. Remember the anthrax scare in the early 2000's?
We were sure that somehow Saddamn Huessein himself was going to poison every warm blooded american with this disease that, per usual, People were running around in medical masks. There were even people who were taking antibiotics to "boost their defenses" against the virus, and doctors were prescribing it! People who had no illness and no exposure were taking sipro so they wouldn't get the virus. I'm no doctor, but i'm pretty sure that taking antibiotics when you do not need them build up your immunity to the antibiotics, and if you were to get sick, they wouldn't help you as much as if you had drank your orange juice and took your vitatmans.

Soon after that we had Sars, and honestly I'm not even sure what the hell Sars did. I know that the company we got our cds from had to put ours on backorder for a minute because someone there was infected before they sent us the cds. Next came the H5N1 (bird flu) virus. This was supposed to reach bubonic plague proportions. Jesus Christ himself wouldnt' have been able to stop this killer. You saw graphic videos on the news of bulldozers just plowing through piles and piles of dead poultry pushing it toward the giant bonfire. So people once again dawned masks and gloves everywhere they went. Maybe they didn't want to get bulldozed into a fire.

in my era (that i can remember)
we have had a handfull of things that we should be very afraid of here's a list

1.jack in the box e coli scare.
2. Salmonela scare
3. Mad Cow Diseases
4. Foot and Mouth virus
5. Swimming pool filters pullilng your intestines out of your ass if you sit on them.
6. Sars
7. bird flu
8. anthrax
9. global warming
10. Polar ice cap melting
11. swine flu
12. Islamic terrorism
13. Radon
14. Cabon Monoxide (the silent killer)

I'm just saying, There is life and there is death. Things can kill you, who cares. Your car could burst into flames while you are driving today. Are you going to avoid driving? Just take minor precatutions like you do with everything else. You dont' shoot bottle rockets while you are pumping gas, or stand in water while working on an electrical outlet with the juice on. Its common sense. Wash your hands don't worry about it.

This swine flu is going to blow over faster than $4 a gallon gasoline. You could just as easily drop dead stroke or heart attack. Live a little bit, and unless you have an immunal difficiency get rid of the mask.