When the region you live in loses a huge chunk of it's economy when this thing comes through, tell me it's hysteria.
When your nearest neighbors are a couple 100,000 chickens, tell me this is hysteria.
Sorry if I sound tinfoilish, but the threat of this stuff is nothing to sneeze at or about (pun intended). Even if it never mutates to a human to human strain the decimation of the poultry industry and the trickle down effect on agriculture in general will be a major blow to the US economy.
Just one bird in one flock on one farm testing positive for any strain of avian influenza causes the entire flock to be destroyed. One modern chicken house holds upwards of 30-35,000 birds and there are some farms with 15-20 of those houses. One infected bird can ruin a family farm. I've seen it happen.
Stratfor ran an article a while back saying that the risk was small. Nonetheless, a pandemic is still a major concern. The hurricane, ironically, has set the standard for what people expect from their government in times of crisis.
In the meantime, a decent civil defense strategy is a perfectly reasonable action to respond to a small but significant strategic threat.
There's some potential danger to the poultry section of the economy. But that's not where the hysteria is focused, all the hysteria is obsessed with a possible (though at this point not probable) mutation that leads to rampant human-to-human transmission. With no serious evidence of a true threat to humans all this vaccine crap is hysteria, pure and simple.