“Most people shrug it off as a negligible threat, “
That’s because most people refer to the common Norwalk stomach virus that they get as “the flu” and have no idea that the real thing is a dangerous lung disease.
And an avian or swine flu that crosses with the human flu has the potential to rival the plague as a killer of millions.
People will be complacent and take the flu lightly until another pandemic hits and kills people all around them. In 1918 bodies were stacked along the streets in Philadelphia because their morgue could handle 36 bodies and the flu killed 12,000
I told my mother that I have never had the flu (that I know of), and she said that I had had it as a child. I had to tell her that the stomach flu is caused by a completely different virus...
The avian influenzas have a higher case fatality rate than Ebola, and are more contagious. Yet Ebola nearly caused a national panic while the various deadly influenzas barely elicit yawns.
If you want to become really nervous, take a look at bird migratory routes. In the northern latitudes, birds from all continents mingle and share diseases. Those deadly diseases circulating in Asia cannot be confined there.