I said it was over blown at the time. As people ( even some here at FR) were runny around saying the sky was falling, I suggested that this would not turn out to be that big a deal. Do I have special powers? Only to the extent that I know Australia has its flu season about 6 months before ours hits ——IF it was a truly dangerous pandemic there would have been tens of thousands of deaths last spring
There is no particular reason Australia would get hit before us. The 1918 pandemic began in Kansas, and was limited by the speed of rail. A modern pandemic would travel far more quickly.