People seem to panic when they hear the word pandemic. What people are not realizing is the true definition of a pandemic. It is simply a disease or sickness that is prevalent around the globe. The swine flu can go panemic, and may not kill very many people.

It seems that most people (with the exception of the 1 child in Texas that was visiting from Mexico) show relatively mild symptoms, and recover fairly quickly from this. You need to ask yourself why numerous people in Mexico die from this, and virtual no one else outside of Mexico are affected other than a few mild symptoms? (My city has around 20 cases, all have recovered at home, or are recovering, nobody hospitalized). There are a few possibilities, 1. Mexico is a third world nation and doesn't have the level of health care that US, Canada, Europe, etc have, 2. The virus may have mutated to a more mild version, 3. Mexicans have a genetic weakness to this influenza.

The media and the WHO seem to be panicing over this, but if this is a more mild form and spreads easily, why not test our defences against a true pandemic such as H5N1 that kills virtually 100% of people who contract it? This is a great way to see if we're ready to battle a pandemic.

I for one am not scared... then again the first wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu was mild, 2nd and 3rd waves killed 100 million world wide...

What ladies? You read Slashdot and post to it. Therefore, you probably don't "get ladies". If you look pale green you could look like some kind of sci-fi alien.

I was under the impression that the use of "French Fries" was outlawed back in 2001? I was under the impression that you Yanks changed the name to "Freedom Fries"?

So basically we could say that if Fermilab finds the Higgs Boson, the Large Hardon Collider will remain flacid and unused?

Seriously now... all you're going to do is piss the "God" particle off and it will smite us with a black hole. Think Mc Fly Think!