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We had over 70 cases in the US, though we had no fatalities. Canada had 250 and lost 38. The main reason, once again, for the high transmissions in Canada was the stale air environments in which the patients were infected.

I disagree with you that SARS was hysteria. I just think it was killed before it got to critical mass. Most airborne infectious diseases grow at an exponential rate (a simplified equation is A=A0*k^(t/t_T) where A is the number infected at a time t, A0 is the initial number infected, k is the number of transmissions per person on average, and t_T is the average time to transmit to k people). In the early stages is is theoretically possible to mobilize enough resources to combat and defeat a disease. This was done with SARS. In the later stages, the exponential law overwhelms that option. Consider a normal flu virus. The number of infections due to the normal flu virus is past the critical mass point, and actions like quarantines will not reduce the infection rate appreciably. If avian flu becomes readily transmissible from human to human, I think it is highly probable that it will go past the critical mass point. With a potentially high mortality rate this is unfortunate. It should be noted that with US health-care, the mortality rate will probably be much smaller than that which is observed for the rest of the world (maybe 20%).

Of course there's very little evidence that SARS primary means of transmission was airborne, the evidence suggest fecal transmission, which is part of why it beat on the medical industry in Canada so hard (medical professionals are always in higher risk of fecal transmitted diseases, just look at hep-C where the primary risk groups are homosexuals, intravenous drug users and nurses). According the the histrionics SARS was well past critical mass, and yet in the end it was one of the least deadly identified diseases the world suffered from that year. 100% pure unadulterated concentrated hysteria.

Lots of "if" and "probable" which is exactly why this is all silly hysteria. Yes IF the worst happens, and there's absolutely zero evidence of anything even close to the worst happening, then PROBABLY very bad things will happen. But in the reality we have right now that's a big if and highly improbable.