Coping With Swine Flu Phobia at AAAS

After traveling to New York and DC in the past few days, any swine flu fears I may have nourished in isolation in New Jersey are pretty much gone. Once you see New Yorkers being tough and going about their lives like the urban warriors that they are, it's hard not to feel admiration, and let some of it rub off on you. Meanwhile, in D.C., a little humor helped relieve tensions as well. See here. Nobel Laureate Peter Agre announced at the AAAS meeting the anti-swine flu "elbow bump," to allow us to achieve our social distancing with a modicum of style: Let us not forget that there's moral strength, as well as epidemiological vulnerability, in numbers.