Sixty-three percent (63%) of Americans believe the border with Mexico should be closed until the swine flu epidemic is under control, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Thirty percent (30%) say closing the border is not necessary.

Sentiment for closing the border with Mexico, where swine flu reportedly first broke out, is high among all age, income, employment and partisan groups.

Just over one-third of all Americans (37%) are confident that the doctors in their community are adequately prepared to handle a flu epidemic. Twenty-six percent (26%) do not believe local doctors are ready for such an outbreak, and 37% are not sure.

These numbers are identical to findings last October and are largely unchanged from surveys the two previous years.

However, 75% of adults now are at least somewhat confident that public health organizations get warnings to the public in a timely fashion when epidemics strike. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are very confident.

Only 18% are not very confident of timely warnings, and another three percent (3%) are not at all confident.

The new findings come in a survey taken last Thursday and Friday evening. Since then, the swine flu situation in Mexico appears to have stabilized.

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Last week, 65% of U.S. voters said they were personally concerned about the threat of swine flu, including 20% who said they were Very Concerned. Sixty-one percent (61%) also believed the media was overhyping the outbreak of the disease.

The Mexican government has now scaled back the number of deaths attributed to swine flu from 176 to 100, and some are suggesting that the World Health Organization itself over-reacted to the flu outbreak.

Government employees (47%) are more confident than those in the private sector (35%) that community doctors are prepared to deal with a flu epidemic. A plurality of married adults (40%) agree, compared to 32% of those who are not married.

The overall findings suggest that Americans are quite confident in their government’s ability to warn them about epidemics. This again is true across virtually all demographic lines.

The federal government has said closing the border with Mexico is not necessary thus far to protect the U.S. population from swine flu.

Interestingly, when it comes to illegal immigration and growing drug violence in Mexico, Americans by sizable majorities feel the government is not doing enough to control the border. But, unlike the swine flu findings, there is substantial partisan disagreement on the border control issue.

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