I have not been immune to swine flu hysteria.

It’s messed with my mind for a solid week. I’ve been on high alert for any sign of my death angel — a hacking person, spewing clouds of toxic vapors.

If a swine flu pandemic were to make its way to Napa, reporters would be the canaries in the coal mine. Everything about my job is just asking for it.

Reporters are out and about. We plunge into germy crowds to gather news. As soon as Napa had its first flu victim, we’d want an interview.

Would a reporter risk his life to get up close and personal with a barnyard disease? Of course. As long as the story ran on page one, above the fold.

The Register newsroom is the ideal petri dish for flu of any kind. Not only do we lack private offices, we don’t even have cubicle walls to protect us.

We work in a sea of shared molecules. What you exhale, I inhale. All day long. Breath after breath.

In normal times, I don’t think of office air as having been recycled through a coworker’s pulmonary system. In a pandemic, how can you not?

It’s not like my fellow reporters are the healthiest people on the planet. They hack like a colony of rutting sea lions. Did you hear that? Another cough, just a desk over.

One of my cohorts coughs melodramatically. With every spasm, she plunges her mouth into her elbow. To me, she looks like a swan attending to a fierce itch.

She says this is the recommended way to cough. You mask your eruption with your elbow, not your hand. That way you don’t transfer germs to door knobs, computer keyboards, copier machines, light switches, pencil sharpeners.

Frightening, all the ways that offices are booby-trapped.

Apparently, elbow coughing has been taught for years without my noticing. I’ve always coughed the old-fashioned way, stuffing my hand over my mouth.

Mastering this new elbow trick is harder than you might imagine. My lightning-fast reflexes don’t want to go there.

The pall cast by the virus of cloved-hoofed animals hung over me last weekend at my favorite coffee house, where tables are jumbled together. In normal times, this intimate arrangement creates camaraderie among the caffeinated.

But these aren’t normal times. The coffee drinkers were a cacophony of eruptions, suggesting the plague was already upon us.

The thought that a virus was drifting through the room on coffee vapors put me off my bean.

I encountered an old friend a short time later. Reflexively, I shook his hand. I immediately regretted this rash act.

We talked about old times, but I wasn’t fully in the conversation. I was more concerned about my right hand, which was now possibly crawling with the H1N1 virus.

I tried to contain the damage. Using all my mental powers, I insisted that my hand hang limply until I could achieve decontamination.

This was no easy task. My hand wanted to do what hands of mine always want to do. To fiddle, rub an eye, dab at a nostril.

Stop it, I silently commanded. Stay!

When my pointless conversation ended, I took care of business. I rushed my hand into the nearest restroom and gave it a good scrubbing. I achieved faucet control with my elbows.

Thank heavens the paper dispenser dispensed without my having to touch a lever.

Exiting the restroom was a bit of a trick. I used my damp hand wipes as an improvised glove to pull open the door.

As surreptitiously as possible, of course. I didn’t want to come across as a germ nut. Like, what’s his problem?

During this swine flu business, I’ve monitored myself for any sign of deteriorating health. Fever, coughs — that kind of thing.

So far so good, but I have noticed sniffles. An exceptional amount of sniffles. My nose portal is damp nearly all the time.

It could be allergies. That’s consistent with spring in the Napa Valley.

Then again ...

Kevin can be reached at 256-2217 or Napa Valley Register,  P.O. Box 150, Napa 94559 or kcourtney@napanews.com