If you are talking about swine flu, that is an overreact but mostly by the media not the medical comuunity. H1N1 is a real threat, and given the situation of 1918, it is not an overreact until someone can demonstrate for cretain that 1918 flu is a extremely rare variant that cannot possibly happen again.

H1N1 given the right mutation, would be 100 times worse than SARS. Spending money to prevent that from happening is not an overreaction.