Kyros, if it's true that the deaths are primarily of elderly people with compromised health, then a global 7% death rate will mean utter mayhem in the senior citizens cohort.
Old people's rest homes will go out of business in droves. Geriatric medical practitioners will need to get another job. The medical industry in general will be decimated because old people take a disproportionate amount of care.
National pension funds will be rescued as life expectancy drops by several years.
House prices will drop. Populations are already dropping and this will hurry the process, though not in the reproductive sector. Old people disproportionately occupy a home on their own [I'm making that up, but suppose it's true, because when a spouse dies, they don't sell the house, usually]. Therefore, if they die early, there'll be a flood of houses on the market.
It doesn't really seem real to me because there are so few cases. But they have not got a grip on it yet. But the bug seems to be hopeless at infecting non-Chinese countries [Toronto notwithstanding]. I hope it doesn't become real.
But AIDS became very real. I remember calculating [December 1983] the likely outcome of AIDS deaths. It was scary, but I guessed it would peak about 1990 because people would change their behaviour and a relatively delicate bug would run out of vectors of transmission.
Other than in Africa, that's pretty much what happened. It's an unbelievable catastrophe in Africa, but elsewhere, such as Philippines, a non-event. Well, hardly a non-event, but it's on the lowish end of disaster.
Mqurice |
