Strange... around the beginning of December I found an article on the news.google.com homepage. This entry described what was believed to be the very likely mutation of h5n1 into a human-to-human transmissable pathogen in Indonesia or Malaysia (can't remember which right now). I was so startled that I showed my wife and told her we needed to get our stockpile built up to several months worth. That article can't be found now - it was on news.google.com and it basically said they believed that the mutation had occurred and that they were in the process of verifying. It was in a major city. I can't even find the original entry despite my best efforts. This was saying several hundred people were coming down with it rapidly.

Now the WHO is saying confirmable and "sustained" human-to-human transfer instead of just "confirmable" as the measuring stick for global pandemic.

Let's just hope that when it mutates (this will likely happen in an individual who already has a Human-to-human flu virus active and who contracts the second H5n1 at the same time - making a crossbread) that it loses some of its lethality - currently around 50%.

Oh, and I also read from the CDC that the country (and certainly the world) is not even close to being prepared. Their suggestion? Bunker down for as long as you can. I've been trying to build up supplies ever since. It's a matter of time, not of chance. If not for this particular strain, some other. We are far overdue. Toss in our overuse of antibiotics where fully 2/3rds are fed to animals (they can be found in meat and even the air - probably from animal dung dust) creating massively resistant bacteria, and I'd say I'm much more fearful of semi-natural bio-killers than any terrorist bio-weps. Too bad nobody at Homeland Security or the FDA or CDC seem to be doing much about the former.