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The “hype” as you call it started in about 2003, with the publication of a major paper outlining the threat of this new strain. And even though you lost interest in it, the world medical community hasn’t.

Since that time, preparation for an eventual outbreak of H5N1 to an easily transmitted human to human strain has been continual. Even highly controlled and isolationist nations like North Korea are taking it as uniquely serious.

In that time, the disease has now become endemic to East Asia, expanding its territory in China, a different clade is menacing Bangladesh, which could emerge to devastate the world’s domestic and farm animals. And a third clade has succeeded in uniquely entering the pediatric population in Egypt, unlike other clades, in a less lethal manner, which enables it to more easily combine with human influenza strains.

What has limited its emergence among large human populations is that it reproduces in the lower trachea, and some internal organs, which is rarely done with other strains of influenza. But there is a different cell type in the upper RT and sinuses, and if the Avian flu can adapt to it, it can be easily spread by coughing and sneezing.

Also uniquely, it has maintained a 60% mortality rate in those affected. This is heightened by the cytokine storm effect, in which an immune system overreaction destroys the lungs. This is so profound that a physician can tell if an afflicted person will die from a chest X-ray.

The top lethality of the Spanish flu in 1918 was between 10-20%, and it so traumatized most Americans that they created a social taboo from discussing in, and most tried to block it out of their memories.

So while you think it is “hype”, the truth of the matter is that it remains the single most important biological threat that the United States has ever faced.