Are we really at Level 4 of WHO influenza stages?

This may seem a technical detail, and it sort of is, but the United
Nations World Health Organization has organized the levels of
influenza, creating a total of 6 of them.

Level 1 is "Low risk of human cases."

Level 6 is "Efficient and sustained human to human transmission" -- in other words, time to head for the hills.

Right now, in regards to bird flu, we're officially at Level 3,
according to WHO. Level 3 is defined as "No or very limited human to human transmission."

However, a team of researchers has examined all the evidence and
announced that we should be at Level 4. That's defined as "Evidence of increased human to human transmission."

Obviously, Level 4 is more dangerous than Level 3, and closer to Level 6 which signals an all-out pandemic.

These levels are explained here:

World Health Organization 6 levels of pandemic alert

Reading through this long list of family clusters, in the link at
the end of this blog entry, I'm struck by this thought:

I'm sure it's still generally true that many cases are of children
who catch bird flu from village chickens. And you could say that
brothers and sisters play together with the same chickens on the
same chicken-manure soaked ground.

But so do all the other kids in the same village. Any Asian country
village is going to have a slew of kids. Why don't we have more
cases of children in the same village but not confined to the same
family?

All the kids would be exposed to pretty much the same infected
chickens, so why don't we hear about how 10 kids in the same
village got bird flu?

Also, how many people have died in rural Asia of severe
respiratory problems without being tested for H5N1? This record
seems to full of index cases who aren't officially listed as
bird flu deaths. Yet they were children or young adults. And
nobody paid attention to their deaths until more of their
families died.

How many people have died in rural Asia of severe
respiratory problems without being tested for H5N1 and we
don't have even a suspicion because they didn't pass bird
flu on to other family members? Or those other family
members didn't die so nobody counting them?

bird flu should be at WHO Level 4