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When people who come to Florida for vacation/business/epidemic-fleeing start dropping dead from the virus they acquired just prior to leaving home...

it might be too late to panic by then.

Despite all the fearmongering, this is not an issue unless the bird flu actually mutates and becomes easily transmissible from human to human. And that has not yet happened. From what I understand, it *could* happen tomorrow, but there's also a possibility it could never happen. We just don't know.

I'd like to see a lot less breathless journalism about the progress of infected birds and more serious reporting about exactly how likely it is that one specific mutation will happen to the virus. It might be more helpful.

The migratory patterns go north-south. So while you probably wouldn't encounter a European bird wintering in Florida, I believe there is some overlap in the polar regions between the American, European, Asian, etc. migrations.

So if an American bird was infected over the summer, we could potentially start seeing cases of other infected birds as they head south.

"they don't tend to fly here from Europe"

Yes, but sometimes they do. My daughter the bird-watcher likes to say: when you see a bird far from its native habitat, that bird is in deep trouble, and probably will be dead tomorrow.

I, for one, think it's high time we make a pre-emptive strike against all birds, eliminating these flying weapons of mass destruction before they spread their mass-destruction related activities to our country. Better to kill all the birds overseas before we have to kill them here, on our shores. Or something like that. Can we still eat them after killing them, though?