@Oberon one word for you "LMAO!"

@Xabba, youre first assumption is definatly wrong
The birdflu is as old the "salmunella" disease (DT104)

Humans has known about it for a very long time as it is not a new disease, the reason why it is pumped up to be big news is the same as with DT104..
...People are infected now ...

Ask yourself why H5N1 and DT104 suddenly are so dangerous.
My guess is cause they are pumping the animals full of "****" (antibiotica) which are only making the diseases stronger and more resistant to other antibiotica, in somecases the diseases even mutates.. DT105.

1000 years ago no one died from eating "bacon and eggs" :) (salmunella), nor eating a bird that had caught a cold, simply cause peoples immune-defence were a lot stronger back then or cause the diseases were too weak to have any effect on humans, evolution of mankind changed that.

when I said birdfulu I was meaning the H5N1

Still think it is over hyped. I have no doubt that modern methods of filling them with anti-biotics has contributed to it.

Like I said I'll wait and see. It is like the SARS thing that killed a lot mroe people that was whipped up by the media into the new plague.

You mjust admit that the media is ersponisble for blowing things out of proportion. In this world everything is driven by paper sales. :(

Antibiotics? Probably not in this case, as it's a virus. Those things don't interact much with antibiotics.

Odds of a global pandemic? Usually it doesn't happen. Sometimes, it does (like after WW1). The real problem is that population densities are always getting higher, both for the animals and the humans, and high population densities are more vulnerable to diseases.

H5N1
 

Right on all three accounts, XabbaRus!

A few days ago I met a friend (he holds the kind of believes like Skybird...). He told be that the threat of a pandemic was a much greater reason to worry than terrorrism.
I couldn't resist replying that it was then also a much greater reason to worry than the war in Iraq...
:D