I’m sure by now you’ve all been subjected to the media hysteria surrounding swine flu or the H1N1 virus.  Everyday we’re hearing about shortages of vaccines and the rare cases of deaths as a result of being infected.  Personally, I dismissed much of this as another case of “Fox News”-style reporting, propaganda spread for the purpose of scaring the public for ratings rather than reporting the facts.  However, after speaking to some of my friends that work in healthcare, there is a lot of actual worry about the flu spreading and outbreak getting worse in the coming months.

The real problem right now, however, is the ever increasing number of people who have given into the mass hysteria and going to hospitals to get checked when they don’t, in fact, have any of the symptoms exhibited by the H1N1 virus.  People are getting scared before getting getting the facts and preventing our healthcare professionals from spending more time with people that actually have symptoms and a possible case of swine flu.  Doctors are spending too much dealing with people who think they have the virus from eating pork (you can’t get H1N1 from eating pork, by the way) rather than the folks with fever, aches and coughs.

The good news, however, is that swine flu is actually rather easy to avoid if you take the correct precautions, many of which are rather common sense.  Sleep well, eat well, wash your hands, and don’t hang around large crowds of people in close quarters.  H1N1 is rarely fatal although the reason why it is fatal to some and not others is still up in the air at this point.  The best thing you can do at this point is not to panic about it, educate yourself about the virus and develop some good habits to avoid getting it.