Flu pandemic could trigger second Great Depression, brokerage warns clients

Macleans ^ | August 16, 2005 | HELEN BRANSWELL

[rellimpank]

---I'm just going to get under my asteroid shield---

[jec41]

Yes, I look back in abject horror at the cataclysmic pandemic of 1968. And, isn't virulence a virtual requirement for pandemics?



: it is estimated that only 750,000 people died of the virus worldwide (34,000 people in the United States) during the two years (1968-1969) that it was active. It was therefore the least lethal pandemic in the 20th century.

[trebb]

Gosh, if the Flu pandemic hits at the same time as a series of big earthquakes, huge tsunamis, killer hurricanes, wild tornadoes, raging forest fires, and an anti-gay rally on the Boston Commons, the world may cease to exist.

[Pyro7480]

[Leo Carpathian]

Only in Canadakistan, Eh???

[Dont Mention the War]

This just in: Giant asteroid hitting Toronto could cause financial instability

[datura]

Nothing to see here, move along. You're absolutely right - this pandemic thing is way overblown. You'll never know it was here.


Go ahead. Believe that.

[Leo Carpathian]

"We won't have 30-per-cent unemployment because frankly, many people will die. And there will be excess demand for labour and yet, at the same time, it will absolutely crunch the economy worldwide."

This sums it all up!
Reserve your burial plot, while prices are low!

[datura]

Let's see how Europe deals with it, eh? They're going to have it within the next two weeks. That means no more poultry business, and quarantine of nearly all farm goods. (This strain of H5N1 infects farm animals, not just birds.)

Perfect arrival time as well - just as summer begins to cool off, and fall brings the human flu season out.

No, it won't effect world trade, or any of the markets. No reason to even notice. After all, SARS is as bad as it can get - really. Trust me.

Color coded circles for wild bird H5N1:
May = Red June - Orange July = Yellow August = Green

Square = Unconfirmed reports of dead birds

Human outbreaks, etiology unknown
Orange Oval = Sharkin, Udmurtia, Russia (fever, meningitis, gastro-intestinal)
Blue Oval = Tomsk, Tomsk, Russia (fever, meningitis)
Red Oval = Moklakap, Chita, Russia (fever, vomiting)

[R W Reactionairy]

"No, it won't effect world trade, or any of the markets. No reason to even notice. After all, SARS is as bad as it can get - really. Trust me.

Your sarcasm is well taken, but this strain still lacks an efficient human to human transmission pattern. SARS would have been god awful if its transmission pattern was not for the most part attributable to fecal matter, nebulizer aerosols and some other still unknown [at least to me] pattern of transmission that made hospital workers terribly vulnerable.

Granted this is a flu variant and flu has a documented pattern of mutating and jumping species so the odds of a pandemic are much greater than the odds on SARS if you were "betting on the cum."

For what it is worth, my father spent a few days on deaths doorstep as a seven year old what the Spanish flu hit. Flu can be a big deal ... hopefully not this time.

[festus]

I want my mommy!