There has been tons of Internet traffic in recent days about moviegoers supposedly getting all down in the dumps after watching the blockbuster sci-fi film “Avatar.”

Fans are enthralled by a beautifully created fantasy world of gentle blue-skinned aliens living on a Disneyesque moon. It is a true Garden of Eden where all of nature coexists in harmony. (The film even has a veiled allusion to the biblical Tree of Life.)

Audiences then leave the theater to go outside to asphalt parking lots and drive pollution belching cars home in a world full of excesses, waste and lots of billboards. They reportedly get wistfully teary-eyed about the thought of an alternative lifestyle in Pandora’s jungle utopia.

Personally I don’t find anything wistful about the thought of running around in a loincloth and not having an iPhone, the Internet, and modern medical care.

There are now apparently Web-based encounter groups for dealing with what journalists have termed the “Avatar Blues.” But to imply that a melancholy infatuation with the film fosters any kind of clinical depression makes light of a serious illness, say medical experts.

Predictably, the news media has hyped this angle up from a CNN news report. The most commonly quoted statement from an “Avatar” fan is: “I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora.”

The most despondent comment I could find on the avatar-forums.com site read: “I couldn’t help but cry in public for ten minutes after the movie.” Oh well, this was exactly my feelings after seeing the untimely deaths of Disney’s “Old Yeller,” and Bambi’s mother.

But then I grew up.

Should Close Encounters be Avoided?

It was reported that a 42-year-old Taiwanese man with a history of heart problems died of a stroke while getting overly excited watching “Avatar.”

This leaves me to wonder if people can get this wrapped up in a fantasy about extraterrestrial life, what would happen if the real thing came along?

The biggest dilemma is that if there are paradise civilizations like the Pandoran culture, they are non-technological and therefore can’t communicate with us. And getting to where they live, within a human lifetime, is as close to utterly impossible as I can imagine. (There could be utopian technological civilizations, as illustrated in the 1936 film “Things to Come.” But that idea is definitely not reflected in “Avatar” or any other contemporary films about technology running amok.)

Even if we could warp-speed to paradise, anthropology teaches us that a less advanced civilization gets the short end of the stick when it encounters a more advanced civilization (unless you’re the “Star Wars” Ewoks). So consider the vast gulf of space between the stars “God’s quarantine.”

Even if we are left to simply pick up SETI signals, the realization that we are not alone in the universe could at once be enthralling, mystifying and terrifying to some people. Given our scatterbrained culture “the message” would no doubt spin off pseudo-religions with cult leaders.

My guess is that an alien signal would come from so far away that it would have been broadcast thousands of years ago. Therefore everyday people may treat it as dispassionately as the Dead Sea scrolls — assuming the message has information content.

But in all probability it will simply be an acquisition beacon. There could be some mathematical formulas embedded in the transmission. Yawn. But we wouldn’t have anything tangible to contemplate about the alien culture: no biology, art, music, philosophy, or even religion (if they live in a double star system I bet they have two deities).

Even if we received and decoded a “Wikipedia Galactica,” Nobel laureate biologist George Wald cautioned against pursuing such a discovery. “I can think of no nightmare as terrifying as establishing such communication (with extraterrestrials). It would be a degradation of the human enterprise. The thought that we might attach ourselves like some umbilical cord to a more advanced civilization in outer space doesn’t thrill me at all but quite the opposite.”

Regarding the idea of contacting an altruistic utopian culture, Harvard astrophysicist Philip Morrison said, “Most people speak about what they think they’ll see in a mirror [regarding extraterrestrials]. But enormous distances separate us from those we’d think of as our kind.”

Given the infinite pathways of evolution I would argue that nothing like our kind lives inside the Milky Way galaxy. Suppose an asteroid never came along to wipe out the dinosaurs. And, imagine that given another 65 million years of evolution they developed a technological intelligence. What would you say to a Velociraptor? “Do you brush those teeth daily?”

This is more than idle speculation. There are evolutionary arguments that intelligent beings would be descended from carnivores — creatures with a definitively predatory mindset.

“Just drop sugar on the ground and watch how the ants swarm around it. This will tell you more about the behavior of extraterrestrial life than any science fiction story,” said Pulitzer Prize winning Harvard biologist E.O Wilson.

So the sobering view is that worlds like Pandora may only exist–if at all–in places far, far away in space and time: lost forever among 100 billion galaxies beyond the Milky Way.

“The universe appears to be a gigantic wilderness area untouched by the hand of intelligence, except for God,” said astronomer Ben Zuckerman.

Therefore, our human cosmic condition is that of a prisoner in a cell. All we can do is listen for someone tapping on the wall. But the silence to date is eerie.

But just maybe that’s good for our self-esteem. So cheer up!

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With school closings, a run on face masks, and even a flu-tracker iPhone app, it’s clear that swine flu is taking the country by storm.

As of this month, the flu, now called the 2009 H1N1 influenza, was widespread among people of all ages in 41 states, and it has been reported in all 50. Numbers of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are unusually high for this time of year. And the situation is likely to get worse.

To stem the pandemic, the U.S. government is urging just about everyone older than 6 months to get the H1N1 vaccine as doses of the shot and nasal spray eventually become available for more than just high-risk groups.

Yet, while some people are waiting for hours in line to get themselves or their children vaccinated, others are avoiding it — convinced that the H1N1 vaccine is unnecessary or even unsafe. Scientists are fighting hard to tackle those misconceptions.

“These are urban myths and you can’t even track them down,” said Greg Poland, Director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group in Rochester, Minn. “Someone says something that spreads virally from person to person and becomes truth in their minds.”

Here are expert answers to some of the most common concerns.

Concern #1: Swine flu is no big deal. It’s just another example of media hype.

Answer: H1N1 is a new strain of influenza that is significantly different from flu viruses that have circulated in previous years. As a result, doctors are seeing a larger than normal number of serious complications, including pneumonia and bacterial infections. They are seeing more cases and more complications than usual in healthy young people. And swine flu is hitting hard unusually early.

This time least year, seven people had died from influenza in the United States. So far this year, there have been about 1,000 deaths, including nearly 100 children, and about 10,000 flu-related hospitalizations. In a normal year, the seasonal flu virus kills an average of 36,000 people and sends more than 200,000 to the hospital. With mutations or other unpredictable events, H1N1 could end up being far worse.

Concern #2: The vaccine is more dangerous than the virus.

Answer: This stubborn myth drives the experts nuts. Rumors have been swirling around the H1N1 vaccine ever since the epidemic began. The truth is that the H1N1 vaccine is manufactured in exactly the same way as the seasonal flu vaccine, experts say, and six decades of experience support its safety. Like the seasonal flu vaccine, scientists expect the H1N1 vaccine to cut the risk of coming down with the flu by between 70 percent and 90 percent.

The vaccine contains no adjuvants — additives that can boost a drug’s effectiveness. It is available without the preservative thimerosal, which contains mercury and has raised health concerns even though no studies have linked it with any problems. You can’t get the flu from the vaccine. And more than a billion doses of the H1N1 vaccine have already been distributed without any unexpected side effects or other warning signs. (The only real risk is for people who are severely allergic to chicken eggs or other ingredients in the vaccine. Those allergies are rare.)

“All data point toward the fact that the vaccine is likely to be much safer than getting the disease,” said Neal Halsey, Director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. “It should be a very simple decision to make. The safest thing to do is to get the vaccine.”

Concern #3: The government will force you to get the vaccine, no matter what you think about it.

Answer: This is simply not true, with just a few exceptions. Anyone in the military is required to be vaccinated as a security precaution. Some states are also mandating the vaccine for health-care workers. That’s already controversial. In states without the mandate, some health providers are actually choosing not to get it, despite evidence that they are more likely to contract and spread the disease if they remain unvaccinated. No one can force an ordinary civilian to get vaccinated.

Concern #4: I don’t need the vaccine because I’m young and healthy.

Answer: “The very people who say that are most at risk,” Poland said. If you’re young, you’re unlikely to have ever been exposed to a virus similar to H1N1, which means you probably don’t have a reservoir of defense proteins, or antibodies, equipped to fight it. In normal years, older people are most likely to experience complications from the flu, along with very young children. This year, people older than 60 are actually developing fewer problems than everyone else because their bodies have battled a larger variety of viruses over the years.

The benefit of the vaccine goes beyond a single person. Getting the vaccine not only keeps you healthy. It also protects your co-workers, your friends, your family, and your kids.

“I can’t stress enough that not getting the vaccine is not a risk-free option,” Poland said. “By the numbers, it is far riskier than any theoretical risk or fear of the vaccine.”