The last time we were all going to die (see flu/avian) I got a little obsessed. Enough to buy black-market Tamiflu to ward off the “what if I didn’t do enough” guilt when friends and family started to drop all around me. And then that passed and life resumed as normal.

I got mildly re-obsessed yesterday (see flu/swine) and spent much of the day toggling back and forth between CNN, CBC, CDC and Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s Twitter feed. And washing my hands. All the time.

And then this morning Dr. Gupta said “it appears the rate of deaths in mexico is starting to taper down” and I took my personal flu paranoia threat level down from 5 (Panic) to a more comfortable 2 (Que Sera, Sera) and although I’m still plotting the purchase of new and more pleasurable hand soaps, I haven’t felt a need to watch a live CDC press briefing all day.

And during this brief period of calm I’m reflecting on how annoying it is to have the full weight of the CNN news machine applied to a situation that might actually affect me. I mean it’s one thing for CNN to wrap advertising around far-away wars and explosions, another to have them hype my imminent death.