Alright, start at the beginning. What's bird flu?

The bird flu is a kind of influenza virus that mostly infects birds. It's very contagious and very deadly among birds. Since 2003, it's been increasingly killing humans as well. It's technically called "avian influenza" and the specific subtype I talk about is "avian influenza A (H5N1)". It's still considered a bird flu because it can't easily move from person to person, but if it develops that ability it'll be considered a pandemic flu. For the sake of consistency I'm going to keep calling it bird flu, because that's a more informal name and the one it's most likely to be called in public. Bird flu and pandemic flu are both totally different than the seasonal flu we get every winter.