The only thing I know for sure about the swine flu is that it's a great conversation starter with chicks.

As a happily married man for nearly 27 years, this is not something I know firsthand. But my 18-year-old son attests to it, with good reason. He is just now rising from his bed and resuming a normal life of summer fun between high school and college. But the week he spent with swine flu seems to have been worth his newfound celebrity, with its fawning sympathy and attention.

I blame this on a strange evolutionary quirk. Modern humans have lost the gene that allows them to react to news events rationally and with common sense. It's a gene we must have misplaced somewhere as the media age progressed. We watch the worst of the world parade across our television screens, then slam our doors and windows, not bothering to enjoy our own placid streets.

Ever since news first emerged that some people in Mexico had died from a new strain of H1N1 flu virus, and that the strain was beginning to spread to other countries, people have divided themselves into two camps. The largest of these is typified by a Web site under the URL: doihaveswineflu.org/. Go there and your screen turns red, and in large black letters is the message: "Yes. Panic."

The more extreme elements of this camp have adopted racism as a cure, blaming Mexicans, and especially illegal immigrants, for what they know will be something as devastating as the Black Death. The Chinese government went so far as to lock up Mexicans within their borders, even though these people had not been home since the disease broke out.

The other camp thinks it's all just media hype, a ratings and subscription magnet. As evidence, they point to the fact that they aren't sick.

I was in the first camp on the morning of my son's graduation, when he woke up listless and had a temperature of 101.6. Later that day, when the doctor confirmed, with a 90 percent certainty, that he had the swine flu, we were wondering whether to notify relatives so they could gather, with masks on their faces, of course, to pay their respects.

But the doctor seemed unusually calm. He prescribed Tamiflu, but he said we might not be able to find it because swine flu was spreading across the Wasatch Front like dandelions. Otherwise, he said, just take it easy and the disease would pass within five to seven days.

And it did. As sicknesses go, our version of swine flu was easy. No vomiting, no frightening fevers or loss of appetite — no signs of a curly tail.