Overreaction or Necessary Precautions:

I'm not quite sure what to make of this whole H1N1 scare that is sweeping the nation.  Is it really that big of a threat?  I didn't fly off the handle when both Barack Obama and Al Franken won the elections this past year, and that's pretty damn scary stuff.  I remember the big Y2K scare; we didn't do anything different for that, while other people we knew were out buying supplies and generators and checking out moving off the grid in remote areas of northern MN.  If I had been alive at the time, I don't think I would have gone off the deep end when Orson Wells did his War of the World's broadcast that freaked out millions of Americans.

Katherine and I were out shopping at a number of stores today, and all I can say is I wish I had stock in the hand sanitizer industry right now.  Walmart actually has anti-bacterial wet wipe stations so you can sanitize your cart handles.  At work, they've put a dispenser next to our time clock...we have to punch in a code and give a fingerprint scan.  K is saying that our church is going to start outlawing pot lucks, and we may be forced to start catering special events and just have people chip in money to cover it.

What the hay!!!  There's like 10 million ways to die on this planet.  Are the odds that I'm going to die from H1N1 any greater than the odds that I'll be attacked and killed by some animal kingdom jihadist, like a rabid chihuahua. 

I don't have a problem washing my hands a few times throughout the day; but I can't see turning into Adrian Monk and becoming germaphobic---or would it be viralphobic?