Last Friday, I talked to Metro general manager Kevin Desmond about how his agency plans to respond in the event of a swine flu outbreak. The answer, in short: They're putting up signs and asking people not to cough on each other. "We're following the advice of county department of health and the CDC ... and watching very carefully how things are evolving," Desmond said. "The basic recommendation from the department of health is for people to practice protective hygiene: Don’t touch your hands to your eyes, mouth, or nose and wash your hands a lot; don’t go out in public if you're sick; and cough or sneeze into a tissue or sleeve and not your hand." If you ride the bus, you'll probably see new signage with those recommendations sometime later this week. Desmond says Metro has no plans to step up its bus-cleaning schedule, adding that it would be a "huge undertaking" to try to sanitize every bus every day.

Desmond says Metro wouldn't shut down unless ordered to by authorities—a scenario he calls a "huge financial emergency," because Metro would still have to pay people despite drastically reduced revenues—but it might reduce service, as it did during last year's snowstorms.