[Pox]

Roughly 1 in 6 humans on the planet to die from the flu over a 6 month period.

I have a hard time believing this, regardless of historical precedent, but stranger things have happened.

[geopyg]

... In 1918, when the world population was 1.8 billion, an influenza epidemic incapacitated 1 billion and killed 20 to 40 million, all within the space of 8 weeks. ...

Found the following on GOOGLE.

One thing is, lots of the deaths are from pneumonia etc. and related to poor general health knowledge. I imagine in the developed world the odds are better. Although with 5 patients for every hospital bed it may not? Third world (women and children) would be hardest hit.

World War I wasn't won - it was "called" on account of the flu.

[Marie]

I have a hard time believing this, regardless of historical precedent, but stranger things have happened.They say this evey dang year. I'm sure that sometime, probably in my lifetime, there will be a bad pandemic. But none of these scientists can predict that *this* will be the year until we're in the middle of it. Unless they have 10,000 cases with a 25% (or higher) mortality and a name for an identified virus I'm not going down this road again.

[pandemic_1918]

>>I have a hard time believing this, regardless of historical precedent, but stranger things have happened<<

1 billion is just the case fatality rate rate (70%)

http://www.recombinomics.com/H5N1_case_mortality_rate.html

times the number infected (1.5 - 2 billion).

It's not hard to get to 1 Billion dead.