But being uninformed or overhyped about it doesn't help anyone. Folks are not, for whatever reason, absorbing some of the key information. For instance, people have been infected, but the vast majority of them work closely with infected birds. Some live in poor villages where they sleep with their chickens. And some of the earliest cases involved people who were actually doing things like sucking the mucous out of the bird's beak prior to cock fights. Blech.

Yesterday, I got an e-mail from the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit coalition made up of restaurants, food companies and consumers, decrying ABC's made-for-TV movie about bird flu. I had to smile. They called it a "fake-u-mentary."

In "Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America," 20 million Americans die. So far, internationally, 206 people have been infected.

Center director David Martosko said, "This film is no more factual about bird flu than the Wizard of Oz is about tornados."

The problem, Martosko said, is that common sense (that's that hand washing thing, again) can't compete with surgical masks and hazmat suits on TV.

I have some fairly pedestrian tastes and like a good disaster movie. But too often we confuse fact and fiction. If you don't believe it, look at the fervor around "The Da Vinci Code."

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Deseret Morning News staff writer Lois M. Collins may be reached by e-mail at lois@desnews.com