Buck Carruthers, reporting lugeside from Torinonono! I can hear my voice echo hollowly in the sparsely attended halls of the Winter Olympics in Turin, the Pittsburgh of Italia.

Why is attendance so poor? You're hearing it here first, folks: bird flu. Remember Thomas Mann's great travelogue Death in Venice? Sure, he wrote it in 1912, but its portrayal of the conspiratorial media blackout on the plague sweeping that Italian city is a chillingly accurate portrayal of the current Torino situation. (It's also surprisingly good at describing the homoerotic feelings I have for the gold medal Italian team pursuit speed skaters, but that's another story.)

Already struck down by the flu: German Andre Lange, four-man bobsled superstar, Austrian ski-god Hermann Maier, American skater Evan Lysacek, Croatian gold-medal skier Janica Kostelic, Norway's cross-country star Marit Beorgen, and most of the Norwegian combined team.

Gotta go; I've a frog in my throat. Anyone have a lozenge?