>>>Here's the latest link from Vietnam
>>>
>>>http://english.vietnamnet.vn/en/society/19746/over-50-percent-of-h5n1-patients-die.html
>>
>>"This type of flue appeared in Vietnam for the first time in 2004. So far, Vietnam has had 122 patients, 50 percent of them died."
>>
>>Since 2004, 122 infected and half died. This is newsworthy? Really?
>
>That's a pretty high mortality rate - maybe not as bad as Ebola/Marburg, but still serious.
>
>From the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5n1
>
>"Due to the high lethality and virulence of HPAI A(H5N1), its endemic presence, its increasingly large host reservoir, and its significant ongoing mutations, the H5N1 virus is the world's largest current pandemic threat, and billions of dollars are being spent researching H5N1 and preparing for a potential influenza pandemic."


It might be a high mortality rate but the infection rate quoted in the article is extremely low - 122 people over 7 years in a population of 80+ million people.