There was a lot of hysteria over the H1N1 flu when it first hit; while it is a bad virus, it isn’t as bad as feared. H1N1 tends to affect younger people more than older people, since many folks over 55 have been exposed to a cousin of the current H1N1 virus back in 1957. Also, this flu isn’t as lethal as many viruses of the recent past, like the bird flu that hit Asia or SARS that hit Canada and China earlier in the decade. That being said, people have died from this bug, including 4 people in Kentucky. You don’t get swine flu from eating pork products. Pigs and humans have similar cardiovascular systems and thus are prone to the same diseases, but proper cooking will kill off the virus; lunch meats are already cooked, so any bugs they have aren’t generally from the animals providing the meat. That’s ...

Public health officials have a tough dilemma in dealing with the H1N1 flu ; they want to make people aware of the problem and get people to do the common-sense precautions that will help slow the spread of not only H1N1 but a variety of garden-variety bugs without creating undue panic. Schools will often close down if the flu hits ; even during a normal flu season, if a school hits a critical mass of absenteeism (10% is often enough), they will close the school for a week. That will be long enough to let everyone who has the flu get over it so it doesn’t spread any further. For schools, sports can be an issue; sick players are going to be in close proximity to healthy teammates and foes alike. When the flu hit the University of Florida’s football team, ill players, including star quarterback Tim Tebow, flew to ...