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of the world’s population (WHO 2005), spreading throughout the world in as few as 180 days (RTI, 2006). As compared with a normal flu season, where some 0.2–1.5 million die (WHO 2003), deaths from even a mild new flu might include an additional 1.4 million people worldwide. A more virulent form, such as the 1918-9 flu, which was more deadly for healthy adults than a normal flu, could have much more serious consequences, killing as many as 1 in 40 infected individuals (Barry 2005) or some 71 million, with some authors suggesting that as many as 180–260 million could die in a worst-case scenario.

 

3.1 Possible economic consequences of a human influenza

 

pandemic

 

Table 1: Possible economic impacts of flu pandemicTable 1 reports the results of three separate observations of the economic consequences of a pandemic. The first (mild) scenario is modeled on the Hong Kong flu of 1968-9; the moderate flu has the characteristics of the 1957 Asian flu; and the severe simulation is benchmarked on the 1918-9 Spanish flu.

 

Each of these scenarios assumes that efforts by individuals and official agencies to limit the spread of the disease are no more effectual than those observed during previous epidemics and reflects differences in population density, poverty, and the quality of healthcare available. For the world as a whole, a mild pandemic would reduce output by less than 1 percent of GDP, a moderate outbreak by more than 2 percent, and a severe pandemic by almost 5 percent, constituting a major global recession. Generally speaking, developing countries would be hardest hit, because higher population densities and poverty accentuate the economic impacts in some countries.

 

Figure 3 and Table 2 present the results of an alternative modeling of a pandemic. It is based on a pandemic similar in terms of mortality to the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918/9. This scenario is presented with a view to better understanding the factors driving the aggregate numbers in such observations. The scenario distinguishes among three sources of impact: economic losses due to mortality,

 

Figure 3: Efforts to avoid infection give rise to most of the costs during a pandemic economic losses due to illness and absenteeism, and economic losses due to avoidance behaviors. As Figure 1 shows, the relative magnitude of these three factors differs considerably: people’s efforts to avoid infection are 5 times more important than mortality and more than twice as important as illness.

 

The first column of Table 2 shows the impact in terms of GDP lost in the first year of the pandemic purely from additional deaths. The second column builds in the impact on aggregate productivity resulting from the infection of some 35 percent of the population. Even though individuals are only temporarily un本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。