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How worried should we be? As a virus, H5N1 is a great deal deadlier than the H1N1/A swine flu bug that triggered the flu pandemic of 2009-10. Of the 507 human instances of H5N1 that have been confirmed by the World Health Organization (WHO), 302 have died. At the exact same time, whats kept H5N1 from creating its own, far deadlier pandemic is the fact that the virus doesnt appear to spread simply between human beings. With the exception of a few, scary cases, almost every single person who has contracted H5N1 has done so directly from a sick bird. Thats part of the reason why the disease has only struck in Asia and parts of the Middle East and Africa, where live poultry markets are frequent and where there's normally little separation between a backyard chicken farmer and his birds. (More on Time.com: Far more Wisdom From a Long-Ago Plague)
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