China to shut borders if bird flu mutates
investorshub.com
By Susan Fenton
Sat Oct 22,12:20 PM ET
HONG KONG (Reuters) - China will close its borders if it finds a single case of human-to-human transmission of bird flu there, a Hong Kong newspaper reported on Saturday, while a defiant Taiwan said it would copy a patented antiviral drug.
Saving lives would be Beijing's top priority in efforts to contain a possible outbreak of bird flu, even if it meant slowing the economy, Huang Jiefu, a vice minister of health, was quoted as saying by the South China Morning Post.
The World Bank said while prevention measures would cost a lot, the economic damage from a pandemic would be far worse.
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World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz told world parliamentarians in Finland that prevention would still be far cheaper than cure.
He said SARS, despite being contained relatively early, cost east Asian countries 2 or 3 percent of their gross domestic product for a quarter.
"Stop and think what a larger epidemic that spreads death and disease around the world would do in damage to commerce and the international economy," he said.
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money.cnn.com
"We cannot begin to quantify the potential damage in terms of gross domestic product, but a realistic scenario might be GDP declines in the tens of percent," said Carnell. "In the case of slower growing economies such as Europe or Japan, a decade's economic growth could be wiped out."
Disruption to trade and travel from efforts to contain the virus would be incalculable, he said, adding global, regional and national economies would come to "an abrupt halt."
One big fear about the reemergence of a 1918-type flu strain is that it killed millions of people in the most productive age groups -- the 20- to 40-year-old bracket -- as opposed to just preying on the very old and very young.
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Some of the Bay Area doctors are predicting & planning for potential human-to-human avian flu to reach Silicon Valley in two to three years. Thailand had one case where a mother contracted avian flu directly from her daughter, rather than thru birds. (The daughter got it from birds, but the mother was 160 km away from the ill chickens.)
One planning report shows they expect the workforce to get ill first, from memory I believe it said approximately 2 to 3 weeks ahead of the rest of the population. First wave not expected to be as strong as possibly the more lethal second or third waves, where each wave is a few months apart (e.g. spring / fall). Ramp's community peak 6 weeks from onset, incubation period only 3 to 4 days, indivdiual illness lasting a week, 25% total population expected to be impacted.
Hightech corps should have their contingency plans in place - inventory, distribution, workforce, medical supplies, etc.
I think Intel should work with city officials to enable wifi across the entire Bay Area (and other major cities), not only San Fran by Fall of 2007 because avian flu is likely to disrupt other communications.
Regards,
Amy J |
