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The World Health Organization yesterday upgraded the situation to Phase 5. I'll let you go to http://www.who.int and peek for yourselves. You may want to visit http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/ also.

I think we can afford to joke around a bit...but I don't think we can afford to be dismissive.

The fact is that H1N1 is a transgenic virus, one whose mutated DNA has allowed it to cross between species, and one that has so far seemed to be highly contagious in humans. The bird flu ain't got nothin' on this.

That this is a brand-new virus--current point of origin places it in La Gloria, Mexico, north of Oaxaca, with the earliest-known infection dating to April 2--means that nobody in the world has an immune system that can target this specific virus.

If we start out healthy, our immune systems can adapt to this new virus and our symptoms may be little different than a bad case of plain ol' flu. But this flu is highly infectious because no one has immune systems to address it.

I'm just saying, don't dismiss swine flu as only media hype.