OK, so I guess we all remember the last bird flu outbreak and most people think that there was a lot of fuss over nothing. The H5N1 strain didn't turn out to be the mass killing pandemic strain that so many experts feared at the time and it wasn't as deadly as been previously thought.
However, this new strain has spread extremely rapidly throughout China. It is infecting the very young right through to the very old - suggesting that there is no natural human resistance to it - and has a death rate of around fifteen to twenty percent of those infected.
Medical experts are not yet certain that it will cause problems on a global scale, but the disease is already showing two of the five mutations necessary to become a significant threat by becoming transmissable from human to human. The speed of these changes has alarmed some experts and they are now asking medical staff in other countries to watch out for people returning from China that may show symptoms of flu.
Those who are of a mind to make preparations may wish to consider doing so.