On my television screen, a doomsday voice intoned that the greatest threat to America wasn’t terrorism or nuclear weapons — but the person right next to you. Cut to a picture of two men shaking hands, then chaos.

It was an ad for the made-for-TV movie, “Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America.” 

My first thought was how silly this movie looked; then I remembered what it sometimes was like in Vi?t Nam, where I had just returned from, when the bird flu scare was at its height. It’s one thing to read reports about the disease popping up in places far removed from your own. It’s another to be in the thick of things and to be gripped by an irrational fear.

I’d heard of bird flu before I moved to Vi?t Nam in May 2005. It might have even been somewhere in my head that the country had a bunch of bird flu deaths (more than any other country). But the illness seemed to be the least of anyone’s worries. Chickens strolled the sidewalks of major roads, roamed the narrow streets of the Old Quarter. No one cared.

That all changed in October, when the international and Vietnamese media began clamoring with the dangers of bird flu. They were talking about a potential pandemic that could kill millions! I remember thinking: thank goodness the parents don’t have a TV (and CNN) in their new house, or they’d be bugging me to come home.

See, I wasn’t scared yet.

On my birthday I celebrated at an Indian restaurant, where - despite some of my friend’s worries - we ordered the chicken tikka massala. Soon after I was on Lý Van Phúc (which might as well be known as Grilled Food Street), where I had chicken wings. A more prudent friend ordered the ribs, noting that the rest of us were “brave.”

The next day at work my boss said, “Have you guys heard? There’s been another bird flu death. Here in Hà N?i, in Ð?ng Ða district.”

I froze. Hà N?i? Until now, most of the deaths had been out in the country. And Ð?ng Ða? Where I just moved to?

Suddenly I began to question if the chicken was cooked properly. You can never trust street food. Out of nowhere, my shoulder started tingling. I wondered, half-seriously, if I had bird flu.

It works that quickly, fear. The government banned chicken at the hotel restaurants, most of the restaurants followed suit, and suddenly everybody was scared. I heard there was an expat stocking up on water and dried noodles in case he should have to barricade himself in his home. I wondered if the U.S. would refuse to let me back in if there were a human outbreak in Vi?t Nam.

My relatives stopped eating chicken. Rumors went out that people were killing their pet birds. There were also talk that in the countryside, people were retrieving the ducks and chickens that government officials had forced them to kill and cooking them anyway. A television news segment showed masked men throwing ducks into a pit of fire. I felt sorry for the birds, seeing them turn increasingly blacker as they futilely tried to get out of the pit. But, I thought in a moment of melodrama, it was them or me.

In one of my English classes, I asked my adolescent students if any of them still ate chicken. Only one boy, Tùng, raised his hand. When the others gasped, he smiled with wicked glee. The next week, after more frightening reports of outbreaks among flocks, I asked Tùng if he still ate chicken. This time, eyes wide, he shook his head.

I also gave my high-school class a bird flu quiz to test what they knew about it. Most of the pupils didn’t realize Vieät Nam had more deaths than any other country. When I began pumping my fist and chanting, “We’re number one!”, they didn’t join in.

I decided that knowledge equaled power.

I went to the World Health Organization Web site to learn all I could about bird flu. I found out that even if a chicken has the H5N1 virus, cooking it at 70 degrees Celsius — or 158 degrees Fahrenheit — will kill the virus; that bird flu is caught by people mostly in the slaughtering stage, so those at most risk are those who cook it; and that bird flu can also spread through feces (which my students thought was hilarious; I guarantee that “feces” is the one English word they’ll never forget).

On the Web site of a man selling his book, “How to Beat the Bird Flu” — clearly a trustworthy source — the author claimed that you can defeat it by strengthening your immune system. After all, out of all those people infected there have to be some survivors, right? I decided to be one of them. I began working out like mad and talking nonstop about the health wonders of fruit juice.

This looks silly, I know, but fear isn’t rational. It starts making you believe that in the midst of a global pandemic, fruit juice and laps around Ð?ng Ða Lake can be your savior.

The furor only lasted so long. By late December most restaurants began serving chicken again. My  aunt cooked chicken for Christmas (although she joked that she wouldn’t eat it because of bird flu). In January the government announced that bird flu had been contained in Vi?t Nam.

So for the most part, the fear has passed.

But like I said, fear isn’t supposed to make sense. Days before I left Vi?t Nam, I was out in my family’s que, or home village, in Ninh Bình province, right in the heart of the farming district. When I passed a carton of baby ducks, I didn’t think. I picked up one of the adorable ducklings, stroking it with my fingers.

It didn’t cross my mind until later that I had snuggled a baby duck, of all things, in the middle of the country where 42 people had died from bird flu.

And right away, I felt a tingle in my shoulder.