Arrgh! sorry to hear that! I just loaned my car to a person Who was visiting my daughter Whose 2 year old is showing everything but the fever. Probably nothing, but I'd rather play it safe. I'm in Gardner Ma., a long way from the last diagnose, so it's probably just a precaution.

I have to kind of agree with Charlie - the "noise" of "blame the immigrants" is surprisingly muted, to me. The larger question, it seems to me, is... why are we flogging the idea of this as a public health disaster? So far it appears... people get the flu, and people who normally don't do well with the flu (the elderly, the very young, the immunocompromised) are seeing it become fatal... but not in especially outsized numbers. It's the flu. Prudency suggests most of the steps that have been taken, and it also seems likely that we'll see the flu pass. If the flu outbreak somehow became rapidly more contagious, or incredibly larger numbers were affected errobly, I could see us renewing a debate about "typhoid marys" and the like... but so far, I think this flu story is more hype than substance... and thankfully, it seems even the people who would use it to flog their agenda seem pretty muted.

I am tired of the American impulse to scapegoat, which has escalated dramatically over the past quarter century,  as a replacement for intelligent discussion and reasoning.  Instead of working to resolve problems, we act like screaming banshees, wildly pointing fingers of blame. America has a single, mindless response to everything, and that is to "Get tough on..." As a society, we are like adolescent boys overdosing on testosterone.

 I'm embarrassed to be part of a culture that has lost its ability to think and use common sense. We've become a bunch of shrieking banshees, wildly pointing fingers of accusation at anyone/anything that ruffles our feathers.  We don't approach problems like adults, using sound reasoning to resolve them.  The name of the game is blame.  We merely target a scapegoat, so that we don't have to actually think or do anything. To a surprising degree, we let government and media select scapegoats for us, sparing us the "burden" of deciding. The reward: scapegoating enables us to feel superior to the targeted group.

Let me use this example to show how logic no longer applies in the US: Our greatest health care costs are due to our excessive use of motor vehicles, and most adults drive.  The most carcinogenic smoke is the kind that contains oil particles (motor vehicles). This causes everything from our soaring rates of childhood asthma and cancer to the destruction of the arctic ice cap, which will have a cataclysmic impact on the entire planet in the near future. In defiance of all logic, our response to this is a punitive campaign against cigaret smokers!  Under 18% of US adults smoke, and smoking restrictions are so stringent that few of us have any exposure whatsoever to cigaret smoke, while we do have daily exposure to smoke from motor vehicles. Simply turning the ignition on your car releases more smoke into the air than chain-smoking a full carton of cigarets. So, targeting smokers instead of drivers is like stopping to swat a mosquito when a hungry bear is on your heels.

This is how we deal with national and international issues as well. Instead of behaving like grown ups, we launch zealous "get tough on..." campaigns. Consider our serial wars of the past half century. Now, the US isn't going to attack China -- we only attack small countries with weakened militaries.  We keep losing, anyway, but that's OK, as long as we could enjoy a campaign of glorious self-righteousness, insisting that our purpose for slaughter is to "bring freedom and democracy".  We never quite get that the world rejects America's example of "freedom and democracy" (i.e., we imprison a greater percentage of the population than any nation, the worst economic disparities among all modern nations and the worst levels of poverty in the industrialized world, etc., etc.)

If the swine flu did enter the US from Mexico, it was likely via an American who has enough disposable income to enjoy a vacation in Mexico. Trying to demonize a little boy who died is a particularly reprehensible example of how America has replaced human intelligence with brainless scapegoating.