I am still off work. I feel better, then go downhill in waves. Now Julie has got it, and is off work, too - although she's in the early stages. Rhiannon, as well, is ill. Of course, I tease them that they are 'super-carriers' of SARS (they both came home from Thailand a few weeks ago) - but it was probably me that brought it home from working in the public domain, and also a fairly 'sick building' (sealed, air-conditioned, etc).

I am not trivialising the distress of SARS, of course, but I think the media is getting hysterical. We have six probable cases in the UK so far (probable, because they may just be ordinary flu). Nobody has died. And 'ordinary' flu kills the old, the young and the weak every winter, here. Just as it did (on a plague scale) throughout Europe in 1918-19.

I guess viruses are 'The Alien' (neither living tissue nor inert crystals, neither plant nor animal....), and we are back to fear of 'mutation' (it's like the 1950s). I thought this one was trying to kill me, that's for sure. and two weeks later, it hasn't entirely gone....