Is today the end of email as we know it?

I've gotten no less than 77 virus-containing automated messages (and counting) today since about 7:30am. Though these things cannot hurt Macs, apparently, it's freakin' annoying to hear the damn email ding that I have a new message only to find out it's a virus again. And I'm actually waiting for stories via email, so it's not like I can shut it off or anything like that.

I think I heard our tech guy say we have to ride this out, that there's nothing that can be done. I don't know. All I know is the constant messages are going to get really annoying really fast.