The Associated Press reported over the weekend that about 250 schools in the United States have closed or plan to shut down - some for as long as two weeks - to put the brakes on the dreaded (read: ridiculously exaggerated) swine flu threat.

250 schools? For God's sake, that's more than the total number of swine flu cases that currently exist in the entire nation! In other words, some schools that are completely unaffected by the illness are, for absolutely no reason, denying their students an education.

School officials are using phrases like "abundance of caution" in justifying their decisions. "Abundance of paranoid hysteria" would be more like it.

And one can't help but wonder: With an estimated 1 million cases of seasonal flu occurring in the United States each winter, how come these same schools don't close for weeks at a time every December, January, February and March?

This really has to stop.