Swine flu

Every time there's some strain of the flu that has the name of an animal attached to it, people start freaking out. Wikipedia, the ultimate source of truth, points out that "typically, in a year's normal two flu seasons (one per hemisphere), there are between three and five million cases of severe illness and up to 500,000 deaths worldwide." 

Five hundred thousand people die per year from the flu. To date there have been 149 confirmed deaths from the swine flu this year out of about 2500 possible cases.By these (admittedly fuzzy) numbers, the swine flu is less deadly than the average flu. There are worse cases of pink eye spreading through elementary schools. People get sick all the time...and people die from the flu every day. We will all be fine. Now please, news media, please get back do doing what you do best: reporting about pirates.