"Flu death toll 'less than feared'"

Let's just say that if we had been wrong it'd have been terrifying. The other day we wrote of the power of collective panic.

Well, According to the BBC, "Mexico has revised down the suspected death toll from swine flu from 176 to 101", as "dozens of samples came back negative", indicating that the outbreak may not be as bad as was initially feared. Also, according to America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), "the new virus lacked the traits that made the 1918 flu pandemic so deadly".

Like Philip Alcabes writes in the Independent, "the flu death rate Mexico in the past couple of weeks, fewer than one death per million people per week, is several times lower than the death rate the US typically sees from flu and its complications every year".

Let's just hope it stays that way.