This flu is a compound flu of 4 strains.
1 Bird flu
2 Swine Flu
3 Rare Asia swine flu
4 human to human varient

It is not entirely uncommon for mutant strains to express multiple traces of other strains.
If you were to engineer a flu intentionally it would have this kind of multiple signiture. To call this a terrorist attack would be irrespondsible and Cheneyesquely evil.

Conclusion: It is too soon to say if this is a lab created variety.

death rates have been all over the place from 20 to over 100 but right now the number being reported is 67 in Mexico.
20 days of public event cancellations have been announced in Mexico City.

The CDC has pronounced the outbreak in this country to be a level 3 out of 6. All cases seem less severe than the those in Mexico.
IT is reponsive to Tamiflu and Resnovere

San Diego 8 reported cases
Kansas 2 reported cases
NYC dozens of reported cases
Texas 4 reported cases

The coming school closures will be done as an abundence of caution measure until we know more.

Dr. Hartl of Geneva Switzerland and an official of the World Health Organization has called this outbreak to be only potentially a worldwide pandemic.