Until recently, I thought that whooping cough was a disease of the past; like polio or scarlet fever.

I was shocked to learn that 20 cases of whooping cough have been confirmed this year, with lab results pending in two additional cases. A startling figure when you consider that only 15 cases were reported from 2000-2006 as a six year total.

But the bigger concern is the effect that this outbreak will have on the community. I imagine everyone is going to start coming down with whooping cough symptoms. Every sneeze, every runny nose will have people lining up in the ER.

I suppose it's better to be safe than sorry. But then hypochondriacally packing into a confined waiting room could potential cause more harm than good.

I imagine that for every 1,000 symptomatic patients, only one will actually have the bacterial disease; however, that one infected person would be highly contagious and now your sitting next to them with hay fever.

That is why it's important not to overreact. I think about the Dinosaur BBQ scare, when a stomach bug went around the Syracuse area and some genius decided that the common link was one of the most popular restaurants in the city.

The restaurant was forced to close, which in itself is terrible for business. Moreover the story of the alleged “outbreak” was all over the news, scaring away new customers. It was terrible, but when the health department came, they deduced that it was nothing more than coincidence.

I discourage psychosomatic paranoia. And I'm guilty of it myself. As a student at SUNY Oswego post 9/11, I was issued an iodine pill.

The pill was to be ingested immediately in the event of a terrorist attack on the nearby nuclear power plant. I carried that little pill around with me for four years, even after I graduated and moved away from the area. As if an iodine pill was going protect me from nuclear holocaust.

Now I am certainly not saying that anyone who has symptoms should ignore them completely. If a persistent cough that lasts longer than a week, see a physician. If one of the confirmed cases is a close acquaintance and if contact between you and that person is frequent, see a physician.

But if you went to a wedding with someone whose brother's wife has a cousin whose co-worker is one of the confirmed cases; trust me, you're closer to Kevin Bacon.

Carole Estabrook's column appears Mondays in The Citizen and she can be reached at estabrookcarole@yahoo.com