SAN DIEGO — Eager to be all things to all people, President Barack Obama tends to say one thing and do another. And so, when Obama said recently that he had no interest in "militarizing" the U.S.-Mexico border, it was only a matter of time before the administration drew up plans to do just that. Sure enough, according to media reports, the Pentagon and Homeland Security Department are developing contingency plans to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

MEXICO CITY — Pushing through a hospital waiting room crowded with anxious relatives, nurse Gisela Bernal signed off from a 12-hour shift working with coughing swine flu victims. “I haven’t had a single day off since this epidemic started. I’m exhausted,” said Bernal, wiping sweat from her brow above a blue face mask. “I want to help all these people. But I just don’t know how long I can carry on.”

MEXICO CITY — Looking through a glass door at her eldest son sleeping between tubes of fluids and heartbeat counters, Juliana Derbez could not hold back the tears. When the normally healthy 32-year-old had fallen sick seven days earlier, the family thought it was regular flu and gave him cough remedies from the pharmacy. But after the government called a national alert over a potential pandemic, they rushed him to the Mexican Institute for Respiratory Diseases where doctors believe he has the swine flu, known medically as H1N1 influenza.

MEXICO CITY — One Mexico City resident believed the government was locking flu victims up in prison. Another alleged the government itself was actually inventing the whole outbreak. A third thought it could be some kind of biological warfare by drug cartels. With up to 68 people dead from a new lethal strain of swine flu hitting Mexico, fear, panic and downright paranoia are spreading through the streets of the Mexican capital as fast as the disease itself.