Why are we being scared out of our minds about bird flu?

I've stopped paying attention to the bird flu scare....

Meanwhile, vaccine manufacturers are terrifying public-health officials, and virologists are queueing up with Fleet Street quotes. "Are we next?" screeches a London University professor, John Oxford, declaring that bird flu "will be the first pandemic of the 21st century". The government, he cries, "must now confront the immediate threat", as if the overflight of a misguided house martin was as menacing as Saddam'sWMD. The World Health Organisation warns that "one in four Britons could die" from the flu. The editorials pick up the cry and demand something be done, preferably involving mass slaughter and expense.

As far as I can read it, the flu strain known as H5N1 has taken eight years to spread from east Asia to Europe. In that time, it has killed just 91 people who have been in intimate contact with diseased birds. Roughly 200 people are ill at present, with a 60% chance of recovery. Short of eating infected bird faeces, humans seem close to immune. As world diseases go, this is trivial, yet it currently consumes more time and column inches than MRSA, malaria or Aids.