Lists about PANDEMICS! Pardon the frivolous use of capital letters. But it seems only apt in these current times where swine flu is yesterday's avian flu was yesterweek's SARS was yesteryear's bovine spongiform encephalopathy aka mad cow disease. This week, TIME published on their website a top 10 list of panics! A few genuine, but most reflect the outright silliness of human paranoia. Those who aren't busy jumping on the bandwagon of a media-fuelled frenzy will surely by now have their fair share of email jokes that started pouring into inboxes everywhere sent by people who are employed solely to be at the ready in their parents' basement with a copy of Microsoft Paint to mass produce and fire away cheesy jokes, puns and parodies i.e. unemployed people.

Face mask or not, it's all right to take a deep breath and calm down a bit about swine flu. Despite the hyperventilating media reports of recent weeks odds are pretty good you're not going to be felled by the nasty but generally non-fatal H1N1 virus. This may come as a shock to, say, Egypt, which ordered all of its pigs slaughtered in a misguided attempt to stop the spread of the flu (which, reports indicate, is not transmitted from pig to person).

Infections are falling in Mexico, the country hardest-hit by the flu bug, and the World Health Organization said the virus has not yet created a sustained outbreak in Europe. Though new cases are popping up around the globe each day, it appears that a widespread global pandemic isn't forthcoming. Just like SARS and the avian flu before it, H1N1 probably will cause more damage through anxiety than actual infection.

- Continue at TIME (Top 10 Panics!)

  ¶ posted by Jon at 5/07/2009