NEW YORK, NY April 30, 2009 —To mask or not to mask one's face, that's one question on the minds of New Yorkers thinking about the swine flu. Jeremy Beiler [BY-ler] is an actor who arrived at work on a bike in the West Village. He says he's reluctant to travel in subways, in part because people aren't being encouraged to wear masks.

BEILER: I haven't seen anyone with masks on, but it seems brazenly American to not wear masks.

But corporate chef Mike Passotti disagrees. He says swine flu has been blown out of proportion by the press and it's silly to wear masks.

PASSOTTI: The media needs something to put on the front page. They need to scare us more. That's what I get out of it.

Managers of pharmacies say they ran out of masks and items such as hand sanitizer days ago, and have to regularly turn customers away.