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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (26526)	1/27/2004 9:44:22 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793916

I hope they throttle this in SE Asia. Bird flu rivals SARS as a global threat By Madeline Drexler, Boston Globe IN THE OTHERWISE dry lingo of public health, a wonderfully evocative word is used to describe impending tragedy. The word is "smolder," and in epidemiology it means the silent, treacherous spread of a brand-new influenza virus. The 1918-19 flu pandemic, which killed 50 million people in just a few months, likely smoldered in Asia (beyond the notice of Western war-making powers) for a year before it caught fire, seemingly at once, in every corner of the globe. This month officials of the World Health Organization announced -- without using the word -- that another potentially devastating flu virus may be smoldering in Asia. In the shadow of SARS, an outbreak of "bird flu" in Vietnam, Korea, Thailand, and Japan has been decimating chicken flocks. When children started dying in Hanoi last October, the world was put on notice: Act now. So far, seven people are known to have died from the new infection, and at least five more deaths are suspected. Today's avian influenza epidemic has many of the hallmarks of a 1997 bird flu outbreak in Hong Kong, which claimed six lives and sickened at least 18. In both cases, the viruses were the H5N1 subtype -- a highly mutable packet of DNA that has proven it can leap the species barrier and kill with astounding speed. During the outbreak in 1997, public health officials were terrified that the novel poultry virus was on the verge of becoming human-adapted -- that is, capable of spreading person to person. If enough residents of Hong Kong had been exposed to enough sick birds, the virus could have perfected its lethality and blazed around the world in a matter of weeks, striking down millions. That year, after a Christmas-time slaughter of birds in Hong Kong's poultry markets, researchers discovered that in fact the virus had already begun to adapt to human biology. Worse, it turned out to be even more deadly than scientists had perceived at the time. One researcher told me, "This is the most pathogenic virus that we know of." He didn't mean just among flu viruses; he meant compared with all viruses. Health officials tracking today's H5N1 virus fear a similarly potent transformation. With a new bird flu in our midst, what should we do? If recent history has taught us anything, it's the need for swift and thorough public health action. The SARS epidemic (which has so far killed nearly 800 victims) proved that classical public health measures such as case detection, patient isolation, infection control, and contact tracing can save lives. SARS also underscored the need for international cooperation and honest disease reporting, but those are trickier propositions. On the one hand, Chinese authorities' notorious reluctance to come clean about the infection strengthened international health regulations and country-to-country arrangements. The WHO's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network -- a web of laboratories, epidemiologists, nongovernmental organizations, and even a 24/7 Web-crawling tool -- is continually expanding. In 2005, new regulations will theoretically give the agency authority to step in wherever it sees an infectious disease threat based on both governmental and nongovernmental sources of information. But in real life, words on paper don't always translate into action, and the failures of recent history may be repeating themselves. SARS had "smoldered" for months in China's Guangdong Province before it sparked across national borders last year. Now, according to London's Daily Telegraph, international health officials suspect that the ongoing bird flu outbreak may have an outpost in southern China -- a historic launch pad for pandemic flu viruses -- and that health officials there have not revealed all that they know. "China is refusing to play ball on this," a regional WHO official complains in the Jan. 18 article. "We need to get in there, and we need to know what is going on, but despite repeated requests, China has failed to be forthcoming." "Smolder" may be a pretty word in poetry books but not in public health. New infections are always smoldering just out of sight, often when human and animal viruses meet and exchange genetic material. Cultural assists such as international travel, invasive medicine, and globalization of the food supply often clear paths for these agents to spread. Sometimes we're too late on the scene. By the time doctors took notice of AIDS in the early 1980s, millions were infected worldwide. The WHO has called today's bird flu outbreak in Asia "unprecedented" in its scope and virulence. Only if health officials and governments act now will we douse this epidemic -- and the next -- before they catch fire. Madeline Drexler, a former medical columnist for The Boston Globe Magazine, is author of "Secret Agents: The Menace of Emerging Infections." © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company. © Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

To: LindyBill who wrote (26526)	1/27/2004 9:49:39 AM
From: gamesmistress	Respond to of 793916

A Cheap Dollar Boom Euro-pessimism was a common theme here. One British economist predicted that a strong euro, coupled with the continuing structural rigidities of the European economy, would produce "a decade of stagnation in Europe," worse than what happened in Japan after its bubble economy burst. The rise of the Chinese economy seemed the other inescapable economic fact of life -- so much so that you couldn't help but wonder if Davos won't someday reconvene in Shanghai. The question here was how quickly the Chinese will want to take ownership of their accumulating wealth -- rather than investing it in U.S. Treasury bills and keeping their own currency artificially low. By David Ignatius Tuesday, January 27, 2004; Page A17 Washington Post DAVOS, Switzerland -- Discussing the falling dollar at a panel of the World Economic Forum here, a former U.S. senator said the greenback's decline was just a blip. The abiding fact was that for more than a century, in good times and bad, the world's investors have been in love with the American economy. And that ardor continues today. Yes, responded a Chinese economist, but "love affairs always end." And, he might have added, new infatuations always begin -- as now seems to be the case with the Chinese economy. Their exchange framed two key themes of this year's annual meeting of global economic leaders: first, the remarkable durability of the U.S. economy, which is surging again this year even though the dollar is weak, just as it did in the late 1990s, when the dollar was strong; and, second, the inexorable rise of China as a global economic superpower. U.S. economic strength is probably the most important fact in this election year. On paper, the Bush administration's economic policies may seem profligate and potentially ruinous. But there was a consensus among business executives here that the falling dollar has been good for the U.S. economy. The cheaper dollar will stimulate demand for U.S. exports abroad and (in theory at least) reduce America's demand for imports. That should gradually lower the towering trade deficit. The mood was upbeat even at a panel titled "What if the Dollar Declines Another 20 Percent?" The biggest worry was how a plummeting dollar would affect other economies. A former senior official of the Federal Reserve predicted a global redistribution of demand toward the United States and away from rising currencies such as the euro. Top U.S. business leaders here said they can feel the muscle tone of the global economy firming, based on their order books. John Chambers, chief executive of Cisco Systems, said the weaker dollar only made Cisco's products more competitive abroad. Carly Fiorina, the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, said that while her company had operations around the world, the weaker dollar wouldn't do it any harm. The only Americans who seem unhappy with the reviving economy (other than the Democratic presidential candidates) are short-sellers who have bet that with its spendthrift trade and budget deficits, the United States' stock and bond markets would inevitably decline. "It's a squeeze play," said a man who for years ran the currency trading operations at a giant investment bank. He argued that the Bush administration was pumping so much money into U.S. corporations through its war spending and other fiscal measures that their profits will keep soaring -- and Wall Street will keep rising despite the weak macroeconomic fundamentals. Contemplating all this bullish talk about the U.S. economy, a top European financial official was scratching his head. If European economies were facing trade and budget deficits like those in the United States, coupled with a sharply declining currency, European investors would be jumping out the windows. But for America, all news is good news. Euro-pessimism was a common theme here. One British economist predicted that a strong euro, coupled with the continuing structural rigidities of the European economy, would produce "a decade of stagnation in Europe," worse than what happened in Japan after its bubble economy burst. The rise of the Chinese economy seemed the other inescapable economic fact of life -- so much so that you couldn't help but wonder if Davos won't someday reconvene in Shanghai. The question here was how quickly the Chinese will want to take ownership of their accumulating wealth -- rather than investing it in U.S. Treasury bills and keeping their own currency artificially low. The Chinese, in a nod toward reality, have said they will allow some upward flexibility in their currency this year -- and various Chinese bankers were offering teasing hints here about just when and how much the renminbi might rise. Indeed, a Davos parlor game was devising proxy investments that would allow you to place an advance bet on the inevitable rise in the Chinese currency once it becomes convertible. Ironically, the favorite proxy was the Taiwan dollar. The one thing few here seemed to doubt was that China's economic power will someday rival that of the United States. I asked one Chinese investor whether he thought the dollar would remain the world's reserve currency 50 years from now. "Of course not," he said. "The reserve currency will be Chinese."