In the winter of 1996/97 over 30,000 people died from flu (Immsmw I think this figure is for Germany alone) in 1997/98 about 350. There was no swine-flu, no foot-and-mouth and no hype in the newspapers.
Only 5% (!!) of the german population was vaccinated against swine flu during the last months, and guess what! we’re still here.

I too have had flu before and then also I was very ill. My youngest son (now 2) was very ill last autumn, the doctors shrugged it off as swine flu without even checking. We found out soon afterwards it was something completely different.