A business intelligence expert claimed yesterday that the public?s perception of bird flu exceeds its probable outcome and says there is no reason why this virus would be the one to make the jump to passing among humans.

The H5N1 avian flu virus has struck poultry stocks in Asia since 2003 and recently spread to Europe through migratory birds. Health authorities fear the disease could mutate sparking a flu pandemic that could kill millions of people.

However Simon Sole, CEO of Exclusive Analysis, a London-based strategic intelligence company which forecasts violent and political risk for a majority of Lloyds of London?s largest insurers as well as some insurers in Bermuda said the likelihood is that the number of deaths from this particular strain will be very small.

?There is nothing particularly to suggest that this particular strain will be the one to mutate to that system,? he said adding that the flu is currently only mutating into an increasingly virulent strain with respect to birds.

For the pandemic to come to pass it has to go human-to-human and that is not inevitable. ?There are certainly bigger risks out there, but public perception of risk exceeds the probable outcome,? he said.

Bird flu has killed or led to the culling of some 200 million birds since it re-emerged in Asia in late 2003. However Mr Sole said his modellers have noted some good news in that when it turns up in a new country it appears to be less virulent than it was in previous jurisdictions where it has shown up.

This week, WHO raised its official tally of human bird flu cases world-wide to 173, including 93 deaths, but Mr. Sole?s company has noted that a majority of those deaths involved people who only had occasional access to poultry.

Since it is very rare for poultry workers themselves to die, it seems possible that there is some kind of immunity built up, Mr. Sole said.

While his firm tells its client companies that the risks of a global epidemic are ?significantly exaggerated in the public mind and that in our view the probability is that nothing will happen or only a very few deaths will happen,? if it does happen his firm anticipates the most immediate effect to be significant business interruption due to lack of will to use public transport.

His firm also anticipates such a pandemic would severely strain the public health system since most governments are poorly equipped to deal with epidemic measures.

He also expects a destructive and costly impact on the poultry industry if poultry has to be kept secured and if the destruction of poultry follows a similar path to the foot and mouth outbreak in the UK where many of animals were destroyed for reasons other than they had foot and mouth.

Mr. Sole said however that comparisons of this possible pandemic to the 1918 Spanish Flu must be put in context. Almost a century ago, the population was exhausted by war, very poorly nourished and equipped medically.

?The target population was very weak at that time and now it is much stronger,? he said acknowledging that his company position is to remain calm about this possible threat.

?What we?re saying is it is not inevitable that this strain migrates from being animal-to-animal, animal-to-human infectious to human-to-human infectious. People talk about it as being inevitable that this strain will do that and it might not.

?There are always strains of bird flu around and there is no particularly reason why this one should be the one to evolve. Most of us don?t? come into contact with birds at all so as long as you can only catch it going animal to human the chances of a pandemic are pretty small,? he said.

His firm instead says the greatest risk today involves the changed political landscape.

He points to the actions taken by Chavez in Latin America, Russia?s move to use energy as an instrument of policy, the Sunni Extremist Intelligence Network as well as Iran?s nuclear programme and elections and withdrawal in Iraq.

The world landscape is now ?an unstable information environment?, he said. ?There are a lot of moving parts out there and there are both more actors in each of these games,? he said pointing to the multi-player game in the Iran crises which includes the US, Europeans, Russian and Chinese.

?All of these guys have an impact on how that things eventually evolves and if you take it to the security council you have to start worrying about what it is the Democratic Republic of Congo wants because they are on Security Council.

?This is not a big change but nevertheless it feels that it is more complicated to understand how things are going to go than it used to be,? he said.