I am as paranoid as the next guy and the apparently impending bird flu is seemingly...impending but I wish the folks in white lab coats would lay off the numberification guesstificationings. Look at this article in The Toronto Star:

A bird flu pandemic could paralyze Canada's manufacturing sector for more than a year and cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars in medical costs, the Conference Board of Canada says. Sketching a worst-case scenario, the board warns up to 1.6 million Canadians — and between 180 and 360 million people worldwide — could die if a global pandemic is triggered by the H5N1 avian influenza virus...The Conference Board's forecast far exceeds other casualty estimates, including those by Frank Plummer, lab director of the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, who said yesterday a human strain of the avian flu will kill up to 50,000 Canadians...Last July, Ontario's chief medical officer, Dr. Sheela Basrur, told delegates to the 15th World Conference on Disaster Management that an influenze pandemic could affect between 15 and 35 per cent of Ontario's population, resulting in 2,900 to 19,700 deaths.