"Maybe it’s the calm before the storm, as Fox News suggests."
There are several possibilities here:
The CDC and WHO numbers are understated giving the perception that it's not that bad. The Mexican backlog of 35,000 samples are telling.
There are very few reports on hospitalizations in the U.S., but one report I saw indicated an 8% hospitalization rate of those confirmed cases.
The flu season normally ends in May, so it could be a bad virus that we were lucky enough to catch just barely the tail end of.
I think there is too much credence given to the lack of a particular gene/molecule theory. This thing was killing people in Mexico.
There were reports of people like the Kentucky lady who was walking around for 8 days after developing symptoms before she was hospitalized. That could account for the appearance of mildness, but we should know by the end of next week, when those same people suddenly start checking into hospitals.
NYC quit counting anything but the most severe cases. And claimed hundreds more were sick with a mild illness that could be assumed to be the swine flu.