Over the past two weeks there has been media craze over an impending pandemic outbreak of swine flu. In airports around the country, people don masks, and in Mexico all schools are shut down and businesses are slowly closing. On the brink of disaster, the global community waits and fears the worst.

However, in a time like this, it’s good to remember this isn’t the first time the world has feared an “epidemic outbreak.” In 2003, SARS gripped the world, and fear consumed our minds. Again, masks abounded and Asian schools temporarily closed. But the epidemic subsided, and the number of cases came in: 8096 confirmed cases of SARS, 774 deaths worldwide. And only eight of the 8096 cases occurred in the U.S., all contracted by people abroad.

The SARS deaths were sad, but it’s troubling to recall the media frenzy and national hysteria over something that hardly affected us Americans at all.

Why were we driven to such fear?

With the SARS frame of reference, a new perspective on swine flu can be gained, and the media hype around the latest epidemic makes more sense. It is easier to understand why “swine flu” last week was the most searched term on Yahoo!, displacing “American Idol.”

Conspiracy theories are swirling around the Internet, everything from Obama bringing it to Mexico when he visited last month, to it being a result of chemical warfare of the Middle East. Others point the finger at Big Pharma; the flu craze is just a way of boosting vaccination profit.

Let’s get a hold of ourselves.

Look at Egypt’s recent slaughter of 300,000 pigs. Though this governmental decision has been ridiculed, it has simply become the scapegoat for the world’s incompetence.

We are all overreacting.

There are legitimate outbreaks of virus and diseases from history that cannot be forgotten. In 1918, the Spanish flu killed 20 million worldwide.

Then there is the swine flu case of 1976 to consider. A strain broke out in armed forces at Fort Dix, when 50 soldiers reported illness. The impending outbreak sent the media into a frenzy launching PSAs that led 25 percent of the U.S. population to get vaccinations. But only about 200 cases of swine flu and one death were ultimately reported in the U.S., the CDC said, a far cry from the 50 million many were told to fear.

That’s not to say it’s not important. Yearly, influenza kills 36,000 people worldwide. The flu strain changes every year; the vaccination can take time to discover. H1N1 (the swine flu) is a combination of four strains, making it potent and evasive. The average age of death in the 23 cases worldwide is 17, so the fear is this strain is unstoppable.

“Every virus is new, and what it will do is new, I don’t think it’s time to let our guard down,” said Richard Besser of the CDC in an interview with ABC.

So let’s not be stupid, but let’s please be rational. Must we all be afraid to fly, to travel … to breathe?

At some point we must trust that those in charge are looking out for the general public. But let’s not be suckers and let something unproven dictate the way we live our lives.

If any good has come of the swine flu hysteria, it’s that we haven’t had to read headlines about the war we still fight, the national debt, global recession or the Mexican drug war.

It’s comforting to know the national media is reporting things that are really, truly important.