By Fred Francis
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 2 hours, 34 minutes ago

Fred Francis
Correspondent

KUBU SEMBILANG, Indonesia - Driving into this hardscrabble mountain village past thick orange groves and tall corn close to harvest, Kubu Sembilang does not appear to be the place where a worldwide pandemic of bird flu will begin.

But that is a still a very real fear because despite the best efforts by field epidemiologists from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Center for Disease Control, and the Indonesian government, the source of avian flu in this hamlet has not been discovered.

Befuddling cluster
The cluster began with one extended family living side-by-side in three homes and so far has killed seven of the eight members who came down with the virus.

In fact, it is the largest cluster ever of H5N1 bird flu virus cases. It is so large and so virulent that health officials have been extremely worried.

Clusters are looked on with far more suspicion than isolated infections because they raise the possibility the virus might have mutated to transmit efficiently among humans, sparking a pandemic and killing millions of people.

Yet, after two weeks of extensive field work and laboratory testing, the WHO has not been able to determine the source of the virus. Given the rural area where the cluster occurred, where farming and livestock are the main source of food, it’s easy to see how difficult it would be to isolate the virus.

Hopefully it will fizzle out, but I wouldn't bet on it - the consequences of a pandemic from this beast are horrendous, far beyond the ABC special a couple of weeks ago.

Bush's 'worst case scenario' talks about 50 million infections in the US, with 2 million deaths. Yet some scientists estimate the 80-90% of all humans on Earth were infected with the 1918 flu, with a worldwide death rate of 3-4%.

This latest outbreak in Indonesia has an 87% fatality rate - if a pandemic had even 1/5th that rate, 17%, and similar infection rates to 1918, there could be 800 million deaths around the world, 40 million in the US - devastating in itself but with unimaginable effects on the global economy and infrastructure.

If the US can have "what if" plans to invade Canada, surely some effort can be expended in preparing for a real "worst case scenario".