9/30/2005

Influenza Pandemic

UN Health officials reported that the pandemic could kill up to an estimated 7.4 million! Also, it was released to the press that the bird virus could easily spread to neighboring countries. The 10 member association of Southeast Asian Nations are cooperating together to compbat the disease that is said to potentially be a global issue. All I can think is that it is good to hear that when a particular region is in trouble, its nice to know that others also help. I mean, what would happen to the entire world's economy if this thing got out of hand? I think that it could cause some major problems.

3 comments:

Dr. Tufte said...

-1 on Elijah's post for spelling errors.

-1 on Ethan's comment for spelling errors.

Is this going to be a big deal this year? Who knows? A good way to gauge the scope of this is that Katrina wrecked about half the wealth ($200 B) and GDP producing capacity of about 800K people. No one talks about the latter, but it is the range of $100 per person per day. Keep that in mind if there are deaths this winter.

Another metric is that a human life is valued (on the high side) at about $10 M. Multiply that by the number of deaths.

carter said...

Dr. Tufte said this is a big deal. I agree there were seven types of the flu and most needed a different type of vaccine. It is hard to value human life but there is definitely a value.

Dr. Tufte said...

-1 on Carter for not adding anything to the discussion.