Recently, eight family members in Indonesia contracted bird flu, H5N1. Seven died; one survived. There have been about a half-dozen such clusters worldwide. Preeminent scientific thinking today is that there probably has been some person-to-person transmission, but genetically the virus had not, and might not mutate to cause rapid human-to-human transmission.

Nonetheless, we must prepare for the worst, a Phase 6 pandemic, which could kill more than one million Americans. Mass inoculations probably won?t happen quickly. We most likely will not have enough vaccine to protect everyone against a yet-unknown mutant strain.