I haven’t been paying much attention to this avian flu, but I think it’s probably time to start :

A global influenza pandemic is imminent and will kill up to 150 million people, the UN official in charge of coordinating the worldwide response to an outbreak has warned.

David Nabarro, one of the most senior public health experts at the World Health Organisation, said outbreaks of bird flu, which have killed at least 65 people in Asia, could mutate into a form transmittable between people.

“The consequences in terms of human life when the pandemic does start are going to be extraordinary and very damaging,” he said.
. . .
“A flu outbreak is imminent but no one knows if it will be next week or in three years’ time,” a WHO spokeswoman said. “It is really difficult to know how many people will be infected but we know we have to get prepared.”

She said the “best case scenario” would be 7.4 million deaths globally.

If you think that’s terrifying, take a look at this estimate from the same article :

Last month Neil Ferguson, a professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London, told Guardian Unlimited that up to 200 million people could be killed.

“Around 40 million people died in 1918 Spanish flu outbreak,” said Prof Ferguson. “There are six times more people on the planet now so you could scale it up to around 200 million people probably.”

That’s not even taking into account the fact that international travel is much more common than it was 87 years ago. If a worldwide epidemic was able to spread in a time when it took weeks to cross the ocean, just imagine how easy it would spread during a 13 hour plane ride with a hundred people breathing the same recirculated air.

With the unqualified political hacks that are probably in charge of keeping us safe from this, we’re all fucked.