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Like so many of the great debates of the information age, this one is characterized not by differing points of view within a cohesive framework, but by the polar opposites of "This is the most majorly serious problem" and "This is nothing to worry about."
I think that within Davis' argument, there is an understandable ambiguity about whether bird flu will be "the big one." What must be remembered is that whichever particular virus it's going to be is less important than the systematic failures that will allow that disease to rampage in the way epidemiologists are predicting. The imporant parts of Davis' argument are not details about how the avian flu might be the one (although the case that it will be avian flu seems strong to me, precisely because of the close proximity and concentration of different species) but rather that whatever may come, we are woefully unprepared to handle a contagious disease outbreak.
