Head of CDC Says Whitehouse H1N1 Flu "Death Toll" Exaggerated

Nearly 90,000 deaths from swine flu this fall? Not quite, the chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.

"Everything we've seen in the U.S. and everything we've seen around the world suggests we won't see that kind of number if the virus doesn't change," Dr. Thomas Frieden said in a C-SPAN interview taped Wednesday.

Frieden's downgrading of the swine flu threat marks yet another volley in what appears to be a growing battle between the CDC and the White House's top medical advisors over the dangers of the next wave of the H1N1 virus.

Dr. Harold Varmus, the New York doctor who spearheaded the report, told the Daily News Tuesday the "flu could be extremely dangerous" and "needs to be taken seriously."

But a day earlier, after Varmus' estimates were released, Frieden and White House health czar Kathleen Sebelius virtually ignored them.

Sebelius merely acknowledged that swine flu "will cause a more serious threat this fall." Bolstering the notion that even the White House was at odds with Varmus' report, its release came with little fanfare and no official news conference.

What's more, the panel's dire report appears to have been released two weeks late. It was dated Aug. 7. Varmus, president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.