Perhaps one should be buying shares in pharmaceutical companies such as Roche or GlaxoSmithKline which produce the two principal antivirals Tamiflu and Reflenza.
40-odd years ago when I was working at a mining house, a director asked me to devise an investment strategy in case of nuclear war.
Two minutes of reflection gave the answer: Lay down a case of vintage Bordeaux wine, a dozen cork screws and a dozen claret glasses. Nuclear war would destroy the world as we knew it — the 12 board members might just as well die with a decent glass of wine in their hands. And if Armageddon didn’t arrive, they could always enjoy the wine with lunch.
SHOOT: Good article this.
We have been there before, when avian flu from China and Vietnam sent the world into a panic in 2005. However, this time things seem different. Avian flu was deadly to any bird affected by it, and it was transmitted to humans in close contact with birds — a fairly small percentage of the world population.
The current virus that has originated in Mexico is a mutation of the 2005 avian variety. It uses pigs only as its breeding ground and is transmitted by humans to humans . Its potential to reach pandemic proportions is, therefore, that much greater.
At this stage, a pandemic is nowhere near certain. But this flu’s possible economic impact could be far worse than that feared back in 2005.
Then, the world economy was soaring and a pandemic was likely only to have reined in economic growth. A pandemic now could bring a complete halt to an early recovery from the current recession.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment