Ever wonder about the effects of a pandemic other than the deaths? NewScientist (25 February 2017, paywall) mentions the estimated monetary effects:
As global economies become more interconnected, contagious diseases and their knock-on effects spread more rapidly. “Nowadays the biggest risk from epidemics is economic,” says Ramanan Laxminarayan of Princeton University. The 2003 SARS epidemic killed 800 people, for example, but cost the world $54 billion in quarantine measures and lost trade and travel. The World Bank estimates that a flu pandemic as bad as the one in 1918 would lop 5 per cent off world GDP and cause an $8 trillion recession. The faster we respond to an epidemic, the less expensive it will be. So we must be prepared – and that costs. Who will pay?
Probably not the United States. NBC News reports Trump’s anticipated funding of the Prevention and Public Health Fund:
Bird flu has started killing more people in China, and no one’s sure why. Zika virus is set to come back with a vengeance as the weather warms up and mosquitoes get hungry. Yellow fever is spreading in Brazil, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria are evolving faster than doctors can keep up with them.
And the new health care replacement bill released Monday night by Republican leaders in Congress would slash a billion-dollar prevention fund designed to help protect against those and other threats.
The Prevention and Public Health Fund accounts for 12 percent of the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 2010 Affordable Care Act set it up specifically to try to lower health costs by preventing diseases before they happen. …
Not only would the proposed American Health Care Act explicitly cut the fund, but President Donald Trump has said his 2018 budget would chop domestic spending and funnel more cash to the Defense Department.
It worries federal, state and local health officials, who have seen their budgets steadily cut over the past 15 years.
Penny-wise, pound foolish. The main article is a survey of the possible next sources of a pandemic and how we will try to respond. As one of the richest nations in the world, the United States is the one that stands to lose the most – and can most afford to put up the cash to prepare for it.
