Reply #67: Very simple.

[Silverhair]

Regular flu is extremely contagious, but not very lethal. Further, it kills mostly high risk people who have health problems already. So 36K deaths on a population base of 300M is about one in 10K. If 10% of the general population get the flu, then that is a mortality rate of .1%. That is a tenth of a percent. So it is not a great worry. That is routine.

The problem with Avian Flu is that the mortality rate is staggering. Between 50 to 70%. At this time, Avian Flu does not EASILY jump from human to human. There have been some H-H cases noted, but only a few. If the virus mutates to an easily contagious form (If you knew virology you would know how very likely that is to happen.)then it would be off and running through humanity just like the regular flu does, and with a high lethality.

It has the potential of greatly reducing the human population of the entire earth. Regular flu doesn't have that potential.

Read John M Barry's book about the 1918 flu epidemic. It has an excellent chapter on the flu virus, what it is, and how it works.

H5N1, the Avian Flu, infects pigs as well as birds. Pigs can also catch regular human flu quite easily. If some pig get both at the same time, then the two viruses will make many combinations, and some of them will be really bad news for humanity.

The hope is that when it mutates to H-H form, it will also shed it's extreme lethality. But even if it drops to a "mere" 1% lethality, it will still be ten time worse than regular flu.