So far, since this Bird Flu surfaced and anyone started counting, a grand total of somewhere near 200 deaths have occurred since 2004. In the whole world.

That is not an epidemic, that is random. All the deaths that I've read about happened after heavy contact with infected birds, and most of the infected birds were in high-density populations.

A lot of people were sure it would follow the migration patterns of birds. It didn't --- it followed the roads along which dripping trucks of birds carcasses traveled.

The last time there was a Flu Scare was in the 1970s, they rushed a flu vaccine through the system to avoid a major pandemic. A grand total of ONE person died from Swine Flu, 25 died from the vaccine, and at least 500 came down with Guillain-Barré syndrome from the vaccine.

If H5N1 DID happen to mutate into a human-to-human disease, the mutation itself would probably make the current vaccine useless, wouldn't it?

And I don't really understand why they think this particular flu would be the one to go pandemic. A pandemic could come from many other, and possibly more likely, sources, such as pigs, which seem to share a lot of diseases with us.

I'll pass. It's time to go out and see how my chickapoos are doing!

Sue