Evening Lizards! From my college days and 4 semesters of Communicable Disease classes, I would say that this Flu outbreak has the potential to be pretty bad. Charles is right in that we are long overdue to a global pandemic. The fact that 1000 cases are being reported in Mexico, for the last 48 hours, indicates to me that the Mexican Govt is withholding alot of information. 1000 becomes 10,000 real easy and in this day and age of global travel it becomes 1,000,000,000 easily. I would suggest that since there are confirmed cases in NYC, Kansas, California and Texas the spread has begun. By the way, the masks that you need are the N95 type that can filter viruses.