There is no evidence that the flu will become a pandemic. But the frenzy is diverting both money and attention away from more important health threats, says MSNBC.
"I have a bunch of patients coming in here who are more worried about bird flu than they are about heart disease," said Dr. Marc Siegel, an internist and associate professor of medicine at the New York University School of Medicine. "The fear is out of proportion to the current risk."
Providing some scary scenarios, chief avian flu coordinator for the United Nations, Dave Nabarro, predicted up to 150 million deaths.
But Wendy Orent, an anthropologist and author of "Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World's Most Dangerous Disease" said that public health officials have vastly exaggerated the potential danger of the bird flu.
According to Orent, the virus, H5N1, is still several mutations away from being able to spread easily between people; and the virus generally attaches to the deepest part of the lungs, making it harder to transmit by coughing or breathing.
"We don't have anything that makes us think this bug will go pandemic," Orent said.
