Bartlett on avian flu

John G. Bartlett, MD, John Hopkins University School of Medicine, provides perspective on avian flu in this Annals of Internal Medicine review. We don’t know when or even if an H5N1 pandemic may occur or what its impact will be. Bartlett warns that we should assume worst case scenario, and that at present we are woefully unprepared for a pandemic resembling that which occurred in 1918 and 1919.