I was not on board with the whole Y2K thing and I'm generally not afraid of many of the other things that tend to cause mass hysteria: shark attack, mad cow disease, terrorist threat levels, Janet Jackson's boob, etc. But this is starting to really worry me. Partly, it's because the WHO--an organization not prone to hyperbole--is saying things like "We at WHO believe that the world is now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic," and "If the virus becomes highly contagious among humans, the health impact in terms of deaths and sickness will be enormous." And partly it's because compared to illnesses that have a MUCH smaller chance of killing me (SARS, mad cow), avian flu is getting very little attention in the media and subsequently, little is being done to prepare for the worst. The WHO and CDC are recommending that hospitals set up their avian flu isolation wards now, and clinical trials of possible vaccines are only now just beginning. This disease has killed 90% of the people who have gotten it, and it's the flu. We're fucked.

Thanks a lot, Danz.