This past spring I watched an author (don't remember who & for the life of me can't find the book) that had just published a book on the Polio Epidemic in the US after the WWI. 

He made a very interesting case for the reason that we experienced an explosion of Polio was indoor plumbing.  His thesis was that prior to indoor plumbing polio was endemic in the environment and most children slowly built up an immunity to it via minor illness.  Once in awhile it would cause serious disease but not usually.  Anyway I thought it was a really cool theory and it stuck in my head.

Then over the summer I got to thinking about the infections in SEA and after numerous people pointed out that the vast majority of severe illness was in children and young people and BINGO that guy's theory of the polio epidemic suddenly seemed to make sense to me for what we were seeing in SEA.

Well, my point then, and my point to this now is that the Western World has no endemic exposure to H5N1 and when we (in the Western World) encounter the virus we will be mowed down by it.  We will not have had a number of years to slowly build an immunity to it or enough of an immunity to experience a mild infection. 

No one I have espoused this theory to has seemed to think that it has merit, but it really, really makes sense to me...maybe because I heard that author's presentation & I just don't know how to explain it properly.

Anyway...what we may be seeing in Turkey, whether H2H or B2H, I think we will see extreme illness and death because that region is virgin territory...and so will we be when it gets here.

I would love to get some feedback from y'all on this, or maybe someone out there knows about the book that I am talking about.  Would love to know the title so that I can purchase it...I think there might be some valuable information in it for our battle with H5N1.