Mayor Bloomberg's response so far to the swine flu outbreak has been disturbingly lethargic. He's trying to downplay it instead of facing it directly, which would minimize the problem.

His lack of action on closing the New York City public schools is downright reprehensible. Closing school for a couple of weeks would hardly be the end of the world. The kids could make up the time in the summer.

Like it or not, schools generally are the main venues for the spread of colds and flu. Children are notorious for spreading diseases. Closing the schools would be a reasonable precaution that would protect the public health with little or no adverse consequences.

What we have is a failure to govern by a Mayor who is completely out of touch with what is going on in our city.

The Catholic Church also deserves plenty of criticism for not closing its schools for a couple of weeks. It's bad enough that kids there have to worry about child molesting priests. Now, they needlessly face a deadly disease.

We don't need to panic, but our officials need to take reasonable, sensible steps to slow down this epidemic.