The Bird Flu is Comming! The Bird Flu is Comming!

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Moonliner

The case fatality of even highly virulent flu strains are a couple of deaths per 10,000 people."

I have problems with that number. The 1918 flu epidemic killed between 20 and 40 million people. World population was perhaps 2 billion at the time (earliest numbers I can find are for 1950, and population was 2.5 billion). That's 1% of the world population. One out of every one hundred people died. And that includes everyone, not just infected. So "a couple of deaths per 10,000 people" is a gross understatement of the death rates possible with an influenze epidemic. True, 75% is absurdly high, but I'm not even particularly comfortable with the 1-2% represented by the 1918 pandemic.

That being said...I think it's possible to mitigate the risks without resorting to the sensationalism and fear-mongering that people seem to like.