My system worked just fine all day yesterday.

I'm a student employee of an organization on my campus that (among other things) support virus issues inside the residence halls. The majority of students use the university supplied email address along with its accompanying webmail interface. You explain to me the hundreds of people currently in our database that have viruses such as Netsky if they aren't be spread by people using webmail.

The viruses are attachments that students open and have nothing to do with Outlook's behavior (the supported email client is Eudora anyway). Lately, these infections rely on their own built in smtp server so an email client doesn't even need to be set up on the computer for it to spread. I can guarantee you 99% of the infections on my university occur because a student opened a file attachment from their webmail.

Education is normally associated with universities. If supposedly educated people in their early 20s (people who grew up with computers and are more comfortable with them) can't stop themselves from opening attachments, it isn't a stretch to believe the general population has a similar problem.