Even today, the fear of epidemics is wide-spread.

e.g.

"Even nowadays people keep panicking about epidemics and plagues"

as a possibility.

Even today, fear of epidemics and diseases goes around again and again.

"The phrase "der Kommissar geht um" in Falco's original German lyrics is somhow strange because to my best knowledge "umgehen" in the sense Falco used it is normally not used with persons. Actually, the only phrase I know which is used frequently is "Angst geht um" (fear goes arround). In addition it is used for things like infectious diseases (e.g. influenza: Die Grippe geht um)."

http://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/2007/01/th...

Great! Thanks to everybody!