More up-to-date alternative for "avoiding something like the plague"?

In Europe, the last Plague pandemic took place quite some time ago, so, personally, I have never had to avoid the plague. Yet we still say, "avoiding something like the plague". Is there an alternative expression I could use that is based on something more recent and familiar?

For myself, "avoiding something like Facebook" would work, because I avoid Facebook ... uh ... like the Plague. But since Facebook has "1.79 billion monthly active users" (according to a source used on Wikipedia), that expression might confuse a few people.

What alternatives to "avoiding something like the plague" could people use that are based on something more recent and familiar? Creativity is allowed.

Updates:

1. In response to a comment by @WS2 ("Why would you need something current?"): "Avoiding something/someone like the plague" is an example of language that has lost its once powerful meaning because people have no experience with the phenomenon it mentions. And it is overused. See Avoiding clichés on the Oxford Dictionaries blog and Clichés: Avoid Them Like The Plague.
2. I originally asked, "What alternatives to "avoiding something like the plague" would make more sense today?" However, since my intention is not to replace the expression in the English language as a whole, I have reworded the question.

I would consider using "avoid like anthrax". Anthrax became quite popular after the news that it was tested and used in Iraq by the Saddam Hussein regime and letters loaded with the biological weapon anthrax began surfacing in the US.

Concentrated anthrax spores were used for bioterrorism in the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, delivered by mailing postal letters containing the spores. The letters were sent to several news media offices and two Democratic senators: Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Patrick Leahy of Vermont. As a result, 22 were infected and five died.

I just Googled its usage by typing in "avoid like anthrax" and it seems to be used.

I don't want to tell you what to do, Zoot, but I think Tommy Lonighan is a gangster and a racist prick who you ought to avoid like anthrax.

[JAMES LEE BURKE – THE ROBICHEAUX COLLECTION]

"Avoid like ricin" and "avoid like sarin gas" seem to be used, too.

If you are going to use an idiom, or simile, go ahead and use "avoid [something] like the plague".

"Avoid [something] like the plague" is an idiom that is commonly understood. There is nothing that I have thought of, or seen suggested here, that carries the same connotations, or would be as widely understood as "avoid * like the plague". Trying to use something else as a replacement for "plague" is effectively attempting to create your own idiom. We all know what "the plague" was and that we want to avoid it.

People don't need the thing which is stated as what we are to avoid to be something that is/was more immediate to them. If this was the case, then the "Spanish Flu", or just "Flu" would have taken hold in the 1920's after 500 million people were affected by it worldwide. Google Ngrams does not find any uses of things similar to "avoid * like Spanish Flu", or "avoid * like flu", whereas "avoid * like the plague" clearly has a reasonable amount of usage.

My expectation is that when people read/hear "avoid * like the plague", a significant number are including an interpretation of the idiom as if it was stated as "avoid it like a plague", where plague means any of (merriam-webster.com):

1.   a : a disastrous evil or affliction : calamity
     b : a destructively numerous influx

2.   a : an epidemic disease causing a high rate of mortality : pestilence

rather than just specifically "the Plague":

2.   b : a virulent contagious febrile disease that is caused by a bacterium (Yersinia pestis) and that occurs in bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic forms —called also black death

Thus, the idiom, "avoid * like the plague", already allows people to substitute in, in their own minds, whatever thing they feel should be avoided.

Using something other than "the plague" sounds, to me, made up or forced. If that is what you are trying to convey in what you are writing, then go ahead and use something else. If you are trying to use something which feels natural when people are reading/hearing it, go ahead and use "avoid * like the plague".

The articles say not use the cliché, not just to update it

What the articles which you linked in the Question are trying to say is not that you should use a different cliché-like phase in place of the cliché you are replacing, but that you should reword, or re-think, what you are writing so that you don't end up at a point where using the cliché feels like the correct phrase. Ultimately, the point of those articles is not that the cliché should be updated to something that is more relevant to the audience, but that neither the cliché, nor an updated version of it, should be used.

Hat tip to WS2, who posted as the first comment on the question that "avoid [something] like the plague" does not need to be updated.

As long as you're insisting on the form "avoid (something) like (something else)", I don't think there is anything as good as the original. Substituting another word might be a clever twist, but it will still be a twist of the phrase they already know.

But if you're OK with changing the phrasing, there are some other good idioms that can convey a similar meaning:

• My son always seems to make himself scarce when there is yard work to be done.
• Julie didn't like Don's overwhelming cologne, so she always gave him a wide berth when passing his desk.
• Randy tried to steer clear of the candy dish, it was just too tempting.
• Sam loves to talk politics in the office, but I wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole.