Those are some good links at the Guardian site, thanks for pointing that out, Burke. Theer is at least one interesting editorial that views this all as so much panic-mongering...but then again that was written a couple of weeks ago. Things do seem to be escalating.

I still think the media is overdoing it, and that this is comparable to your oridnary flu epidemic in terms of mortality numbers, but perhaps the rate/percentage of infection _is_ something to be wary of. I hope Jeri and kat and others who seem to think this is the "tip of the iceberg" turn out to be wrong, but I worry they may be right, after all...I am really going back and forth on this one now...

People who are, like me, sick of media fear-mongering that seems to get worse every day may well be ignoring this so as to feel in some control over their lives...problem is, forewarned is forearmed ony works if one really does think ahead and act quickly...are we going back to the days of hoarding antibiotics? (not that there's any proof they work against this)

In fact, we do have some isolated cases of infection in the Boston area (first showed up at a daycare center in Newton, I believe, after one child returned from a visit to China); and near the beginning of the news coverage of SARS when it was still confined to Asia, a rumor started that there had been cases discovered in Boston's Chinatown (the media was suggesting at the time that travel would be a likely mode of spreading the disease to other parts of the world); the Boston Globe ran an article recently on how this rumor, even though it was totally unfounded, has all but decimated the restraurant trade in that neighborhood (around the corner from where I teach at Emerson). Now it turns out the same sort of rumor has affected London's Chinatown...

Best advice the public can be given now: stay calm and take care of yourself better than usual.