Amid fears of an approaching apork- alypse, the most contagious disease this week -- at least for a small, hyper- aware portion of the population was paranoia. It struck locations such as Union Station’s Tsch- iffely Pharmacy, where containers of hand sanitizer were moved from the back shelf to the front cash regis- ter. Travel-size bottles sold out yesterday; the store was also doing brisk business in hospital masks. But such visible symptoms of this para- noia epidemic, which is contracted mainly through newspapers, Twitter postings and lunchroom gossip, were far less prevalent than the interior monologues that plagued the afflicted. “Last night, the woman sleeping below me had a horrible cough,” says Melissa Ewbank, a tourist visiting Washington from England and staying in a hostel. “Normally, you’d just think that was annoying, but this time I thought, ‘Ugh, I hope that’s not . . .’ “ “I looked at the Metro poles this morn- ing,” says Tracie Towner, a Washington accountant. Really gave them a good, hard look, as she had never had cause to do before. “And thought, ewww, do I really want to touch those with my hands?” She got into work and learned that a similarly concerned office fairy had placed a bottle of hand sanitizer in every cubicle. It’s so easy to contract paranoia. It just takes one errant glance at a headline before you begin thinking, Has co-worker Bob always had al- lergies? He says it’s allergies, but . . . didn’t he honeymoon in Mexico? Why is he HERE, breathing all over the place?! I hate Bob. We are being ridiculous. We know we are being ridiculous. We cannot stop being ridiculous. But with each new reported case of the flu, an old germa- phobe is validated, and a new one is born. “I went and looked up my symptoms about an hour ago,” says Matthew Baldwin, We are being ridiculous. We know we are being ridiculous. // Continued on A2 Doctors have not been the only ones critical of the government response. The situation is completely overblown. A women in New York City shields herself from the ‘pandemic’ Mary Travers, whose ringing, earnest vocals with the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary made songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” enduring anthems of the 1960s protest movement, died on Wednesday at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. She was 72. The cause was complications from chemotherapy associated with a bone-marrow transplant she had several years ago after de- veloping leukemia, said Heather Lylis, a spokeswoman. Ms. Travers brought a powerful voice and an unfeigned urgency to music that resonated with main- stream listeners. With her straight blond hair and willowy figure and two bearded guitar players by her side, she looked exactly like what she was, a Greenwich Villager directly from the clubs and the coffeehouses that nourished the folk-music revival. “She was obviously the sex ap- peal of that group, and that group was the sex appeal of the move- ment,” said Elijah Wald, a folk- blues musician and a historian of popular music. Ms. Travers’s voice blended seamlessly with those of her col- leagues // Continued on B4 Seven months after taking office, At- torney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is re- shaping the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by pushing it back into some of the most important areas of American political life, including vot- ing rights, housing, employment, bank lending practices and redistricting after the 2010 census. As part of this shift, the Obama ad- ministration is planning a major revival of high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies, in areas ranging from housing to hiring, where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly. President George W. Bush’s appointees had discouraged such tac- tics, preferring to focus on individual cases in which there is evidence of intentional discrimination. To bolster a unit that has been bat- tered by heavy turnover and a scandal over politically tinged hiring under the Bush administration, the Obama White House has also proposed a hiring spree that would swell the ranks of several hundred civil rights lawyers with more than 50 additional lawyers. Mr. Holder said in an interview. “But it’s really only a start. I think the wounds that were inflicted on this divi- sion were deep, and it will take some time for them // Continued on B2 Germs? The Real Contagion, Paranoia. Justice Department to Recharge Civil Rights Enforcement Written By: Bob Writer [email protected] Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary Dies at 72 Written By: Will Grimes [email protected] THE BALTIMORE SUN over 1 million readers baltimoresun.com Monday September 12, 2009 A1 Todays Weather Sports high: 80 low: 60 Orioles: 10 Yankees: 6 Ravens: 28 Chiefs: 20 weather // news A2 lottery // news A4 buisness // news B2 opinion // news B10 movies // news A13 deaths // news A10 classified // sports A6 puzzles // sports A8, A10 bridge // sports B8 comics // sports B11 section: Written By: Monica Hesse [email protected]