The 1976 swine flu outbreak at Fort Dix in New Jersey, resulted in the death of a U.S. soldier. President Gerald Ford initiated a huge immunization effort that resulted in some 45 million Americans getting a swine flu vaccine. Over 500 people subsequently got a rare neurological illness called Guillain-Barre Syndrome, an auto-immune disease that affects the nervous system and can cause paralysis. Some observations on the current swine flu ‘crisis’: – It’s a global reprise of the US 1976 phony swine flu panic; – Just as happened in 1976, the virus is not a significant threat having very low morbidity and mortality rates. And, even if it mutates into something more dangerous, the most reasonable scenario to be expected is a flu pandemic like the ones in the 60s and 70s, which, although being lethal to many, were also easily controllable, and quickly faded away. As a matter of fact, flu viruses have never been the kind of monstrous threat that is now being sold to the public. The only exception to that was the 1918/1919 pandemic which, of course, had an ideal context for lethality: the trenches of WWI Western Front and the terrible sanitary and nutrition conditions of post-WWI Europe and [...]