According to the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, of 179 businesses surveyed, 66% are not adequately prepared for a bird flu outbreak.

What should companies be doing? Many companies are looking into ways that allow a large percentage of their workforce to work from home. That means bulking up their disaster recovery plans to make sure email, BlackBerry devices and virtual private networks (VPNs) are in place to allow employees to access their company's computers securely from home.

In a worst case scenario, a bird flu pandemic could infect up to 30% of the population initially. That's about 40% who will be out of work due to illness or because they need to care for loved ones.

Is Bird Flu Really A Threat?
We've seen a wave of news reports and tv docu-dramas about the horrible consequences of bird flu and yet nothing has materialized. It's enough to make a lot of people "cry wolf" since nothing has materialized. Of course, that was the mentality with last year's hurricane season - with so many hurricanes not living up to expectations and hype, what made Katrina different? When that big one hit, it blindsided those that stayed behind.

Still, is bird flu really a threat? According to US Center for Disease Control numbers, if the H5N1 (the current strain) bird flu becomes a human epidemic, it could kill 1 billion of the world's population. The "mild" 1968 pandemic of 1968 killed 2-7.4 million and the "severe" pandemic of 1918 killed 40-100 million.

According to a 1999 study by Meltzer and colleagues, a flu pandemic where 35% of people are attacked by the virus would cost the US alone a total of $166 billion. A milder 1968-like pandemic, with only a 15% attack rate, would cost the US $71 billion. He notes that these are “conservative” estimates and do not account for work days lost due to panic or parents staying home with their children because schools are shut.

However, he points to a recent study by an Australian economist which models the impacts of scenarios from mild to an “ultra-1918″ type pandemic. In this worst case scenario, the cost to the world could run into trillions of dollars.

What about a vaccination? Those with top priority are vaccine manufacturers, medical workers in direct contact with patients and those over 65. The rest of us would just have to suffer through it.