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by josh-j 4784 days ago
They weren't overhyped. Your point is a common and old canard.

The worry wasn't that avian flu or the swine flu would kill a lot of people in their current states, but that they would mutate into something considerably more dangerous. The swine flu, for example, was known to spread easily but wasn't _yet_ very lethal. The avian flu (H5N1) didn't _yet_ spread easily, but was very lethal.

If the swine flu mutated into something more lethal or if the avian flu mutated into something more communicable, then everyone would probably know someone that died from either virus. And that's exactly the worry with these new crop of viruses, and why it's important to react with extraordinarily measures -- to prevent them from becoming something much worse.