I don't call it swine flu, I prefer the term bacon fever.
In any case, as it was with SARS, this is just a huge hype. I understand that to experts like ebhobbs, this is quite serious as the strain is quite virulent. From a scientific point of view, if you emphasise that aspect, it gives cause to worry. Take into account the ability of the virus to mutate, then it certainly does look worrisome. Add to that the prevalent obsession with making the world "safe", you have medical professionals crying the sky is falling.
However, you also need to take into account human resilience and 1st World sanitary conditions. In warm and tropical climates, a simple scratch can mean death or amputation. If disinfected and dressed it'll heal in a few days. As far as I have read, H1N1 has only been fatal to people living in impoverished conditions. Anyone I know that got the bug felt like crap for a few days and then were back on their feet, very much like any flu we've ever been exposed to since birth. Get plenty of rest, eat regularly, you'll be fine.
Y2K was a definite issue. If you don't believe me, try resetting your PDA to a different date and time, and see how some applications, like GPS, will work. They will start going buggy. Now imagine being a pilot and your nav computer starts crashing or showing false information. However, we had legions of coders working to patch our systems and the impact was hardly felt.