Avian flu is overblown media bullshit, much along the lines of SARS and monkeypox, like Nanner said. It does indeed go back to the fact that it's a slow news month. On Nov 25 ("Black Friday"), there were three straight hours of news coverage of eager shoppers on CNN. Three hours on nothing but shopping. And this wasn't in the crazy early morning, either, this was from 9am-12pm. One doesn't really need any more proof than that to call it a slow news month.