Now This Is Something You Should Worry About

Global warming? Hurricanes. That's nothing. We need to start worrying about bird flu.

"It's coming," says Dr. Lee Jong-wook, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), who urges intensified planning now. "When the pandemic starts, it will simply be too late."
The latest avian-flu strain, blamed by WHO for 63 deaths in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia, has spread to poultry in Russia and Kazakhstan and will almost certainly show up in Western Europe as well, international health specialists predict. Tens of millions of birds, mostly chickens and ducks, have been slaughtered in Asia to prevent spread of the animal strain.
WHO researchers say between 7 million and 100 million humans worldwide could die in such an outbreak. Dr. Michael Osterholm, head of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, predicts it could kill at least 1.7 million Americans. Worldwide, he foresees at least 180 million deaths and possibly 300 million.