Do not believe all of what you hear or see in media when technology disasters strike. Many media types have no idea what they are talking about. I spent part of the first day listening to the advice on the radio and was aghast at the irresponsible information being shared. Because many traditional media types, especially local folks, do not generally fully understand the technical side of technology, they are useful in informing the public that there is a problem, but not reliable in describing a substantive solution. Interestingly, the early online media that I saw avoided a solution and just discussed the problem.
Standardization has risks.
In this latest attack, the dwindling market share users of Netscape were not affected if Microsoft Outlook was not installed. Microsoft products continue to be popular focuses of virus attack because of market share. By embracing the market leaders' products, we must be careful to be especially sensitive to the perils of a zealous virus designer who may focus on that market share. Know thine antivirus vendor. The traffic jam on McAfee's and Symantec's Web sites lasted for a few days and downloading their fixes took patience.