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The Swine Flu of 1976 had every indication of being a killer flu, and was less than 10 years after the Hong Kong flu of 1968 had disastrous effects around the US. The HK flu left millions of Americans flat on their back for weeks, even though it only killed 33,000 Americans.

President Ford was absolutely right to try and get the wholly inadequate flu defenses up to the level needed for a killer flu, and there was no argument against his requests at any level of the government. But then, unexpectedly, the Swine flu again mutated to a far less harmful strain.

It did demonstrate, however, that we were helpless against a killer flu.

As far as your contention that H5N1 Avian flu is a scam, let me assure you it remains the most dangerous threat to the United States short of nuclear war, with mortality estimates in its current form from between 10-30 million Americans.

It is vastly superior to every known influenza, including the Spanish flu of 1918. The Spanish flu had a mortality rate of 2.5% of infected persons. So far, inexplicably, the H5N1 Avian flu has maintained a mortality rate of over 60%, except only in one location, Egypt.

H5N1 has subdivided into three major subgroups, or clades. The Chinese clade is expanding its *endemic* territory throughout SE Asia, becoming a permanent part of its ecosystem, and emerging unpredictably, hundreds of miles apart.

The Bangladesh clade is not adapting to humans well, but has developed an unheard of number of animal vectors, including animals with vastly different immune systems. If it emerges as an animal plague, it could wipe out most domestic animals in the world.

The Egyptian clade is the only one with diminished mortality, and then only in children. This is perhaps the most dangerous clade, as its human hosts can help it adapt to spreading from human to human. Then, when it reemerges, it can readily assume its more lethal form.

Within one year of the Asian introduction of antiviral agents, such as Tamiflu, all of the normal influenza strains of North America have developed resistance to them.

The main reason H5N1 has not become easily spread from humans to humans is because most of its reproduction happens in the lower trachea, instead of the upper trachea and sinuses. This is not a major adaptation. However, it makes up for this by, unlike other types of influenza, reproducing in other internal organs.

So far, physicians has been able to tell if an H5N1 victim is going to survive or die by simply looking at a chest X-ray. A large percentage of the death have occurred because of oxygen deprivation to the internal organs. In short, the lungs were destroyed.

The bottom line is that H5N1 cannot be compared to any previously known human disease. Its effects are instead potentially comparable only to the intentional introduction of myxomatosis in an effort to wipe out the rabbits of Australia in 1950:

http://www.csiro.au/science/MyxomatosisHistory.html

And while H5N1 is not *that* lethal as a disease, it is closer to it, in mortality rate, than any previously known human epidemic.