Few global health decisions have created quite as much commotion as that on April 29, when the World Health Organization , responding to the escalating spread of the H1N1 flu, raised its pandemic alert level for the first time to phase 5, meaning that a full pandemic was considered imminent. As of May 11, the WHO has reported more than 4,600 cases in 30 countries — including 2,600 cases in nearly every state in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — and the threat level remains at phase 5. But over the past two weeks, fears over H1N1 have cooled considerably, as the virus has failed to spread easily outside North America and the number of deaths from the disease has remained low, leaving the WHO fending off critics who questioned whether the international agency overreacted
