I have a relative who works at the CDC surveillance center,,she has been talking of this for months, says the CDC is in a high alert mode, they think it is coming, this year, to a town near all of us. She is no alarmist but has said if cases happen here, hole up with months of food and don't leave home. Apparently air travel will stop as soon as cases start, schools will be closed and hell will follow. They don't know yet how the virus will act in large populations and hope the death rate won't be what they are seeing in those who contracted it from birds. It is a matter of time.
This is no joke, no small thing. And parenthetically my grandfather died in the 1918 flu, he was well in the morning and dead that night. My father was 14 and spent months riding his horse around rural Louisiana burying the dead and tending to the sick. He was 14.
I don't think some people are taking what could be...serious enough. Maybe they can't grasp how deadly a situtation we could find ourselves in.