With all the hysteria and hyperbole about ebola being tossed about by the media and certain elected officials, now seems like a good time to pause a moment and listen to a 2007 talk by Laurie Garrett, author of
The Coming Plague.
Speaking personally, this is by far the scariest book I've ever read, because at no point does it drift off into fiction. Garrett stays on track in the real world, examining real world possibilities.
"Lessons from the 1918 flu" (link to video)
This TED talk is confined to the topic of the Avian flu, and I promise that after watching it you'll never again brush off catching the flu as casually as you've done in the past.