Is Swine Flu Scare Warranted

While the World Health Organization warned that doctors are now reporting a severe form of swine flu that goes straight to the lungs of otherwise healthy young people, other experts are going on the record stating that the fear being created among civilians may not be warranted.

The World Health Organization's swine flue update comes in the wake of reports from some countries that as many as 15 percent of patients infected with the new H1N1 pandemic virus require extensive hospital care.

But infectious disease experts from both inside and outside the government say that the phrasing used by the organization raises some questions. They note this is especially true because the existence of such a form of the disease is not a new development.

They claim that may are creating widespread fear of this disease claiming it is similar to lung infections that claimed so many young people during the 1918 pandemic. Others note that government entities may be issuing frequent reports simply to avoid accusations that followed Katrina's devastation of New Orleans and the Gulf coast.

In a report issued today, Dr. Julie Gerberding, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, noted, "Severe pneumonia occurred in 1918 too, but we cannot confirm the pathophysiology is the exactly the same." And Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, one of the government's preeminent figures on swine flu, told ABC News' Brian Hartman, "The severity should not be anything near what we saw in 1918. If what we're seeing now is predictive of what we'll be seeing in the fall and the winter this looks like a mild to moderate, not a very severe, pandemic."