Swine Flu Fear-Mongering

There is all this hubbub lately about swine flu: death tolls rising, global pandemic, danger, death, destruction, panic. You know what else is rising? Network and Cable News viewership. Unfortunately, fear sells, and does it sell well. So, as 1/4 of a doctor, I would like to debunk the fear surrounding swine flu.
Swine flu, or in influenza parlance H1N1, is a novel influenza in humans. It bears marked homology to influenza viruses which infect millions humans every year. Symtpoms of H1N1 are very similar to that of the common, every year flu. It has a similar method of transmission, and a similar course. Let's put it in perspective. Every year, approximately 36,000 people die in the US of influenza. 36,000. Yet when you meet someone with the flu, you don't panic, you don't put on a respirator, you don't pull Joe Biden's kids out of schools and airplanes. You go to CVS and buy some flu meds and tough it out. Or if you're old, you probably go to the hospital. If you are really sickly, you become 1 in 36000. That is the unfortunate course of Human Influenza. Swine Flu is no different. In most healthy individuals, it will cause flu symptoms: fever, body ache, sinusitis, upper respiratory tract infections. If you are younger than 5 or older than 50, it could be worse than that. But there is no reason for this influenza to behave any differently than seasonal influenza. So stop panicking! It sucks that there is now this second type of flu floating around, thereby extending or altering our flu seasons, but otherwise, humanity will go on relatively unaffected through all of this.
The WHO level only deals with communicability of a disease. Level 5 means highly communicable between persons. So is the the common cold. This whole level 5 thing is something for the news to latch on to. Of course, public health officials are rightly taking steps to prevent the spread of H1N1, but civilians have no reason to greatly fear this flu. It will pass just like any other seasonal flu.