Armageddon? Don't frighten the children.

My favourite swine flu quote from yesterday came from Dave the art editor (hi Dave!): "If we were going to have Armageddon I'd hoped for something a bit more zombie-related".

We can joke about the increasingly end-of-the-world we're-all-going-to-die coverage from the media, partly because we are also the media and therefore a bunch of cynical hacks and partly because we can compare what the headlines are saying with our own experience of past scares, the actual statistics, and so on.

But I am getting really concerned about the effect this hysteria is having on children. The Sun's coverage yesterday ("tears and fears after pupils told pal is sick") talked about 12-year-olds crying and holding their noses after being told one of their number had fallen ill. I don't blame them - with the coverage swine flu has got you would think that it's a death sentence, whereas as far as I can make out, and please correct me if I am wrong, it is no more deadly than normal flu. Which can kill, in some cases, but would children be crying generally if their mate had come down with flu in the normal way of things?