Dave Mason looks at the Delay Between Responses option in SQL Agent alerts:
Fortunately, I had set up a SQL Agent Alert for errors with Severity Level 17, which emailed me and several coworkers to alert us to the problem. But this was unfortunate too. Every one of those alert occurrences sent an email. Sure, it’s nice to know when there’s a problem, but a thousand or more emails is most certainly overkill. After addressing the transaction log issue, the alert emails kept coming. This query told me there were still a few thousand unsent emails:
Getting a message that something is down is important. Getting several thousand messages is counterproductive.