Despite the fact that H1N1 swine flu, other is now officially considered a global pandemic, is it really as big a deal as everyone makes it out to be? I think not. Even when the swine flu was declared to be a pandemic it got relatively little news coverage. Now, local news reports about the virus are also decreasing despite the fact that cases are still appearing. This doesn’t mean that people are no longer that worried about swine flu, because if they were the news stations would be reporting on it.  

The H1N1 virus is really no bigger of a deal than the regular flu. According to the World Health Organization swine flu has only killed 263 people out of the 59,814 people who are affected by it. Compared to the 36,000 deaths the regular flu virus kills each year (in the United States alone), this number is small. Given the recent statistics, you only have a .4% chance of dying from the swine flu! Meanwhile, 36,000 people a year die from the regular influenza and you have a 25% chance of dying from cancer. 

Sure it’s possible that swine flu may get a little more common and deadly when the weather gets colder and people are confined to staying indoors. However, by that time a vaccine will likely already be developed and we won’t have to worry about it at all. As it is, vaccines have already been made by Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis AG, French company Sanofi-Aventis and American company Protein Sciences. So do we really need to worry about the swine flu? No more than we worry about the regular flu.