It was a NEW stomach virus that made all those people on that cruise ship sick! That's what I woke up to this morning being reported by most news outlets. Being true to my emetophobia my immediate reaction was, "Ack! A NEW Stomach Virus!!!." My anxiety immediately went up as my mind raced with a plethora of emetophobic scary thoughts: What KIND of NEW stomach virus is it??? If it's NEW I've never been exposed to it so I have zero resistance to it. It's probably some freakish super-bug stomach flu!.... etc etc etc.

And then as I started googling like a mad person to find out more, I found out that it's a newER strain of norovirus - the Sydney strain - which has been around for a couple of years so chances are most people - including me - have probably been exposed to it in one way or another without even knowing it and been just fine. So I calmed down.

So what's the point of this post? To point out how the media LOVES to exaggerate things and often mis-reports facts. That's why I stopped following the news reports about how bad the flu is every year. I'm going to do the same with reports of norovirus and take what the news reports with a grain of salt. That'll be better for my mental health for sure!

Anyway, thanks for reading and for letting me vent. Stupid media!!!! Grrrrrr.