Thanks for the very informative and interesting post to read...
But I have read elswhere, that the bird flu is caused through extensive handling of the infected birds, their insides and outsides(those in the industry-chicken farmers, etc...). I have also read at various times that funny little diseases have originated from over in that area of the world, due strictly to a cleanliness issue. Many here refuse to entertain this idea, simply because they desire to be politically correct and therefore, think that all should walk on eggs, and don't offend someone that may be living there or some such thing. And we all thought, politically correct answers did not happen here...
But it is those selfsame abysmal hygenic conditions, with people living in close affinity with livestock which make the third world a bioreactor for developing variants which are readily transmitted from human to human.
While poor chicken farmers are unlikely to show up on the average American's doorstep, they are the lower end of a generally polarized economic spectrum. If they pass it on to the servants who pass it on to their employer, who is wealthy by most any standard, the disease could travel anywhere.
In the event that transition occurs, the disease has the potential to travel the globe in under 48 hours, and only one infected person would be necessary to spread it to a considerable number of others.
Containment would be a problem.
Now, that has not happened yet.
There is presently no readily (human to human) transmissible variant. Hopefully, there will not be.
As for political correctness, that was not my intent.
Nor was it my intent to equate the currently degraded sense of hygiene present in America today (as opposed to 30 years ago--a result of antibiotics causing people to become generally more casual toward sepsis) to the general absence of hygiene as we know it present among the poorer folks of the third world.
At issue is not whether we in America will catch the virus from the birds (even though those who grow poultry or work in the poultry industry may be at risk if the disease makes its way here), so much as from each other or from someone from elsewhere.
As I must stress, until the virus mutates to a form which is readily passed from human to human, the latter is cause for watchful concern. As long as the virus is not here--in wild birds or tame, the risk is very low indeed.