“A deadly new swine flu strain that has killed at least 20 people in Mexico City and sickened more than 1,000 has “pandemic potential,” the World Health Organization chief said Saturday _ but some fear it may be too late to contain the outbreak.” — Associated Press

From Victor Gischler’s Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse:

“No single thing had doomed (the) planet. Rather it had been a confluence of disasters. Some dramatic and sudden, others a slow, silent decay.

The worldwide flue epidemic had come and gone with fewer deaths than predicted. Humanity emerged from that long winter and smiled nervously at one another. A sigh of relief, a bullet dodged.”

The premise gets even scarier.