Most likely, this will end up being a pandemic in the next few years.
I agree with this. I'm quite a big reader of scientific magazines such as "New Scientist", "Scientific American" blah blah blah. And there has been quite a bit of publicity lately about H5N1 and its comparision to the 1918 Flu Virus. There is an interesting article if anyone is interested on page 16, of New Scientist in last weeks edition (8-14th October). I'll quote a few sentences:
"The genetic sequences of the reconstructed 1918 virus show that it was a pure bird flu that adpated to humans, not a hybrid between a bird flu and a human flu like the relatively mild flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968. This is particularly worrying because H5N1 bird flu is steadily evolving to become more lethal in mammals without combining with a human flu."
They constructed a virus, similar to H5N1 but after parallel evolution with 1918 Virus. "When administered the reconstructed viruses to mice, the animals died with three days - more quickly than from any other flu virus ever tested"