First, the swine flu is/was not a drill, it is not, and may never be, "over".

The major media outlets have lightened up on the swine flu reporting. Unfortunately this comes before the facts, most only recently available, have come to light. Before the purveyors of extreme alarmist reporting has been repudiated. Before the extent of what we didn't/ don't/ can't know has been made clear.

The general arc of of this story has been from early reports and then divided into mild alarm to wild claims of death scything its way across the globe. There is the usual subset of conspiracy claims, it is an engineered disease designed to boost sales of antivirals and a practice run for a NWO culling of excess populations.

Now the general view is that the pandemic is over and we can shift attention to other things.

Swine flu hasn't gone away. Any more than bird flue has. It doesn't make the news much lately but bird flu is still out there.

The severity of this strain of swine flu, as of right now, is pretty mild. Not worse than what would be expected of any seasonal flu. Its ability to jump from person to person isn't much different from seasonal variety. But this doesn't necessarily mean there isn't a large down side. Even a mild flu is debilitating and if a quarter of the population are away from work all at once a lot of our normal expectations of modern life are going to be disappointed. Particularly since a large slice of this population is expected to be from the health care sector. This may make serious, but survivable cases, deadlier.

But none of that may be necessarily true in the future. The 1918 flu was mild in the spring but came back much deadlier in the fall. No guarantee that it gets more destructive, or less, over time. It might pull a 'Mr.Rogers', and like itself just the way it is.

The one thing that seems most likely is that we aren't done hearing about it, and there is a good chance it will be with us for years.