Could 2012 start with a bird-flu panic? A man in China has died from the H5N1 avian-flu virus, two weeks after two dead birds tested positive in Hong Kong. The man was a 39-year-old bus driver in Shenzhen. He developed symptoms in December 21 and died Saturday from multiple organ failure; it appears that he never had contact with poultry or left Shenzhen. Reuters says that 120 people who have had contact with him have developed no signs of the virus, which rarely infects humans but is very deadly when it does.
