Assuming people in the year 2020 have the requisite attention span for anything that isn’t iPod Subatomic-accessible or under 20 seconds long, there may well exist a parable about the scientists who cried pandemic. As the legend will go, there was once a group of scientists way back in the 1990’s who ran to the media crying, “Ebola! Ebola is coming!” and setting off a wave of fear among the general populace. After years had passed and nothing came of it, the scientists again went public in 2003 with shouts of, “SARS! SARS is spreading!” Panic gripped the world once more, until people began realizing SARS amounted to little more than a glorified common cold.

When 2004 rolled around, the scientists once more seized the media megaphone with the panicked cry of, “Bird flu! Avian influenza is mutating and could launch a worldwide pandemic!” But this time, the reaction was muted (except, of course, among the farmers in Asia, Africa, and Europe who had lost millions of birds to the virus and its subsequent containment efforts). Is this where the pandemic parable fulfills the analogy and bird flu turns out to be the real big bad wolf? Or will the scientists just go on their merry way, trotting out a new doomsday disease every few years until they tire of the game and move on to conducting more stem cell research?

Only the passage of time will give us the answer, but it appears that if the wolf is going to make his appearance anytime soon, this may be his best opportunity. Unlike with Ebola and SARS, experts are sketching a highly plausible progression of how bird flu could create a genuine international pandemic. While Ebola is an incredibly deadly virus once contracted, its isolation in Central Africa and ineffective method of transmission made it a poor candidate for the agent of our destruction. SARS broke out in one of the most densely populated parts of the world and seemed to be virulently spreading before health officials could react, but apocalypse was averted by an extremely high survival rate and the susceptibility of SARS to containment efforts.

Bird flu, on the other hand, may have all the ingredients necessary for launching the doomsday disease scenario. The rapid spread of bird flu through the avian population, and confirmed outbreaks in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Europe, demonstrate the virulent transmissibility of the present strain of the virus. If health officials cannot eradicate the disease among relatively contained avian populations, how will they deal with globe-trotting international businessmen spreading germs from their Uptown Manhattan offices to Tokyo and every major hub in between?

Once bird flu jumps the species gap to humans, it is quite lethal: of the 173 confirmed cases of humans contracting bird flu, 93 people have died. Given this lethality, and the probability of the virus reaching bird populations on every continent in the near future, the only real question is whether it will mutate into a form that can spread directly from human to human. Worrisome mutations in this direction have already occurred among some of the infected birds and people in Turkey, with experts pointing to changes in the virus’s structure that allow it to attack cells more virulently.

Experts fear that if the H5N1 strain of bird flu makes the full mutation into a form that could be spread from human to human rather than just from birds to humans, the world could face an epic pandemic of the magnitude of the influenza one that swept the globe killing more than 50 million people immediately following World War I. The possibility for such a mutation is increasing as the virus becomes entrenched in the poorest regions of the world, especially Africa. The close proximity of humans and poultry in these areas provides a perfect environment for an initial mutation, while the poor health care and preexisting prevalence of other diseases leave the human population extremely susceptible to the deadly effects of such a strain.

With the potential effects and devastating casualty forecasts of a mutated bird flu well established, should we begin stockpiling bottled water, dehydrated food, and rifles in a Y2K-style mass hysteria? Maybe, although investing in airtight bunkers might be a more effective panic measure. It is too early, however, to determine whether this is the real cataclysmic pandemic deal, so for now we should remain at least somewhat skeptical. The media played up Ebola and SARS for all they were worth, and so far there has been a strong degree of that same sensationalism associated with coverage of bird flu.