Watching hysteria build around the swine flu outbreak — so similar to the unwarranted hysteria about avian flu not so long ago — I have been skeptical that a catastrophe is really likely to unfold. Advances in medicine have been so great in recent decades — particularly the development of antibiotics and antivirals and in gene sequencing — that it seems to me highly unlikely we will see another pandemic of the order of the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak which killed tens of millions. But as a layman — and one whose last science course was in high school (!) — I don’t feel qualified to question the alarmists. That’s why I was so gratified to read in this morning’s Wall Street Journal this article by Peter Palese. Unlike me, he knows a lot about the subject; he’s the chairman of the department of microbiology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. And he also thinks the scare-mongering is overblown. The headline sums up his argument: “Why Swine Flu Isn’t So Scary.” He concludes: “The most likely outcome is that the current swine virus will become another (fourth) strain of regular seasonal influenza.” Perhaps Joe Biden should read this before he advises Americans again to stay off of airplanes.