As someone living in London (one of the world's travel hubs and a densely packed city), I hope you're right. I have no desire to see a new Plague Year.
bring forth the plagues!!!
I'd guess that SARS was actually much less transmissable than the influenza virus, had a much lower mortality rate than human transmissible H5N1 will likely have, and also that we were rather lucky (due in part to the fact that the major initial outbreak was in Hong Kong).
All the modelling I've read about suggests that if human to human transmission becomes a reality, it needs to be stomped on almost instantly. Because avian flu is so widespread in birds now, there are a multitude of places that an initial outbreak could occur, and most of them are in 2nd and 3rd world countries with bad track records of handling this kind of thing.
I *really* hope that an outbreak doesn't get started.
Perhaps there is a case for immediately destroying any outbreak sites with nuclear missiles to prevent the contagion from escaping.
I still don't buy it. Everything I've read has stated that until now H5N1 does not spread from human to human, unlike SARS (remember how that epidemic was going to wipe us all out as well?). Where is all of this hype coming from? Well, all that Wikipedia can offer is a report by a Canadian investment firm. Excuse me, but WTF does an investment firm have to do with epidemiology? Perhaps they have a few Big Pharma clients?
Hmmm, I smell a bullshit trail here leading all the way to a big pot of taxpayers money about to be dished out to Big Pharma once again. Remember how the US government rushed to buy smallpox vaccines after that little bit of post September 11 domestic terrorism?