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Despite this post’s title, it is not meant to contradict Curzon’s recent post detailing the inherent danger of airborne pathogens in an age when a person can conceivably travel to virtually any urban center on the planet in a single day. The potential threat posed by virulent disease is certainly not to be discounted. However, regarding “swine flu,” the hysteria in both the media coverage and reactive postures of various nations has been over the top, to say the least:

Tabloids and newspapers tout headlines and dire “expert” warnings of an “Armageddon flu” and alarming (ultimately false) reports of fatalities and infection :

At least 68 people have died and hundreds of others have been infected in a viral outbreak in Mexico suspected to have been caused by a strain of swine flu. The World Health Organization thinks the virus may be behind the deaths in Mexico since mid-March.

The Vice President of the United States joined the hysteria with these alarmist assertions, the context of which were in direct contradiction to the President’s message of caution over alarm:

I would tell members of my family—and I have—I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now. It’s not that it’s going to Mexico in a confined aircraft where one person sneezes, that goes all the way through the aircraft,” Biden said on NBC’s “Today” show.

“That’s me,” he said.

“I would not be, at this point, if they had another way of transportation, suggesting they ride the subway,” he said. “From my perspective, this relates to mitigation. If you’re out in the middle of the field and someone sneezes, that’s one thing. If you’re in a closed aircraft, a closed container, a closed car, a closed classroom, that’s another thing.

China has heaved 460 people into quarantine , including 50 Mexican nationals, in an effort to stem the virulent flow. The concentration on Mexican nationals may seem logical, given the origin of this virus but really is comical considering the many airports any single person might have found themselves in prior to visiting China and/or the many airports in one might have inhaled the amassed, potentially infected exhalations of fellow travelers while traveling to China. In reality, any poor sop sauntering down the jetway in any Chinese international jetport is a possible carrier.
The reality is this new pathogen may have reached the status of pandemic but it’s overall tragedy has been vastly overstated, even in it’s apparent viral epicenter, Mexico :

The swine flu outbreak in Mexico may be considerably smaller than originally feared, test results released there on Friday indicate. Of 908 suspected cases that were tested, only 397 people turned out to have the virus, officially known as influenza A(H1N1), Mexican health officials reported at a news conference. Of those, 16 people have died.

Deaths beyond Mexico total one and that singular tragedy was an infant who’d traveled from Mexico to the United States.

Compare those 17 confirmed deaths, world wide, to the annual fatalities suffered in the United States from foodborn illness.

To better quantify the impact of foodborne diseases on health in the United States, we compiled and analyzed information from multiple surveillance systems and other sources. We estimate that foodborne diseases cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year.

While worrisome for its infectious quality the swine flu is hardly the “Armageddon” flu it’s been touted to be.

Update: The hysteria has reportedly reached epic proportions among some US right wing pundits:

“Make no mistake about it: Illegal aliens are the carriers of the new strain of human-swine avian flu
from Mexico,” said another radio talk show host, Michael Savage.

Savage, who apparently has not yet lost his job, went even further in whipping up public emotions.

“Could this be a terrorist attack through Mexico? Could our dear friends in the radical Islamic countries have concocted this virus and planted it in Mexico knowing that you, (US Homeland Security Secretary) Janet Napolitano, would do nothing to stop the flow of human traffic from Mexico?” he said, in comments quoted in the website Media Matters for America.