SHOOT: Quick answer is between 0.8% and 12%, the latter in a worst case scenario.
REUTERS: The World Bank says a flu pandemic could trigger global GDP losses of anything from 0.7 to 4.8 percentage points in the year it strikes depending on severity, while investment advisory firm BMO Nesbit Burns says that the GDP loss could be two percentage points in a mild pandemic and 6 percent in if severe.
Warwick McKibbin, the Australian designer of one widely cited simulation model, says the potential loss ranges from 0.8 percentage points of global GDP in his 'mild scenario' to 12.4 percent of GDP in the most extreme case of a virus more deadly than the Spanish flu of 1918-19, which killed 40-50 million.
The mild scenario is the most plausible right now, he says, given the WHO tally of 816 deaths for 134,503 confirmed cases.
"It's a little bit worse but not a lot worse than a regular influenza cycle," McKibbin, director of the Center of Applied Macroeconomic Analysis at the Australian National University, said.
Even if a panic-driven drop in consumption did slow the pace of recovery from the current recession, the hit would probably be too small to derail it, as long as it is just a scare, says Marco Annunziata, chief economist at UniCredit bank.
Experts have drawn few consensual conclusions however on the economic toll of past pandemics. |
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