Your average year strain of flu kills about 3 times as many people as the H1N1 has been killing. The most common (stupid) answer as to why all this attention is being given to the swine flu is that it has a chance of mutating to something much more deadly. Well so has the average year strain of flu. What's happened here is both under Bush and Obama the government has been lying to show how "on top" of the situation they are in case things get bad. I apologize for introducing a bit of reality into the discussion.

But you're trying to compare the number of deaths caused to date by swine flu to the average number of deaths causes over the entire course of an anual flu season. You need to compare valid statistics-, for example the number of deaths and hospitalizations due to swine flu during the first month or six weeks of reporting vs. how many deaths and hospitalizations due to seasonal flu during its first month or six weks of reporting on average. Make that comparison, and it's clear that H1N1 is a more virulent strain that the seasnal flus we're accustomed to.