H5N1 Economy

Understanding the economic effects of a pandemic can be very interesting. As of right now, the bird flu is only transferable between birds and human, and bird to bird, but there is a fear that the bird flu will enter its second state and that the virus will mutate which will make it easily transferable from human to human. If this virus does become transferable between humans, it will create a world wide pandemic. If this occurs many things will be effected, even including the economy. There are no facts on how many estimated people would potentially contract the virus but, using the data from the 1918 flu pandemic, its possible to gather information that 30% of Americans would become ill, and out of those 30% each would be out of work for approximately three weeks. There are many industries which would take a direct hit if there so many employees were out sick for three weeks. Along with missing work, quotas and productivity slipping, many other things wold be effected as well. If there were to be a world wide pandemic of the bird flu, people would avoid going shopping at malls, going out for dinner, seeing movies in public theaters. For the most part, the general public would probably make extreme efforts to stay away from large groups of people, and this would include certain business establishments which rely on large groups of people in order to maintain a business. If a world wide pandemic outbreak of the bird flu took place these businesses would suffer.