Now we have a doctor in Minnesota who actually seems to promote quarantine for swine flu, with police officers posted outside infected persons’ homes to prevent them from leaving.

C’mon, people. It’s the flu. The flu. As pointed out last week, there is absolutely no evidence that swine flu is any more deadly than seasonal flu. In fact, quite the contrary: All the evidence so far suggests that swine flu isn’t as deadly as seasonal flu.

But let’s not let factual evidence get in the way of a good public panic opportunity. So let’s ignore that for a moment. As with any flu outbreak, hundreds of thousands or millions of people could be sick with the flu at any one time. Exactly how would the good doc propose parking a law enforcement officer in front of all their homes if H1N1 should, in fact, worsen into something truly deadly?

This same doctor laid out a “worst-case scenario” of 30,000 dead from the swine flu . . . in Minnesota alone. Does anyone but me see the irony in the fact that every day more of the unknown becomes known about H1N1 as evidence comes in from the Southern Hemisphere, all of it saying swine flu is mild, and yet every day the predictions of doctors and scientists in the Northern Hemisphere become more dire and overblown?

UPDATE: And there’s this. We’re going mad. Mad, I tell you. (By the way, isn’t it comforting to see that media types are picking up the swine flu advisory panel’s numbers and running with them, without questioning the outlandishness of the figures?)