As per the gist of your H5N1 article, the deadliest viruses are the ones that aren't all that deadly: Kill the host before he's spread you, you'll kill only him. Kill far fewer, the rest will have time to spread you to so many many more, you'll kill a lot more on the whole. And this current fucker seems to be hitting a sweet spot in between: Immediately killing far fewer than H5N1, but just a little more than the common flu -- and above all, waiting with the kill, so we'll spread it first. Yup, nasty.

So, yes, could well be that it'll be on a par with the Spanish Flu of a century ago and other such pandemics. Buuut... I'm still holding out a bit of hope. The only double-digit number of deaths outside China are in South Korea and Iran; the only triple-digit number of infections outside China are in South Korea, Japan, Italy and on board the Diamond Princess. The daily increases on both those graphs are holding steady (or, if anything, trending downwards?). That still feels quite possibly "contained" to me. Possibly.