If Avian flu has an outbreak and assuming that the world isn’t prepared for it then hundreds of millions of deaths isn’t impossible since H5N1 has a high mortality rate. This would have a bigger impact on the world than 9/11 ever had on the US and I predict alot of changes would occur soon afterwards (this is based on the idea that there is an avian outbreak and we aren’t able to deal with it. However the world did deal with the avian outbreaks in 1957, 1968 & 1976 reasonably well). What would this change about how the world works and operates afterwards? It sounds like it would lead to political problems. People tend to turn to radicalism when faced with threats so a resurgence of radical religion and political dictatorships sounds possible. On the other hand perhaps a more global healthcare system would be formed instead of the fractured global system with minor oversights by the WHO and a few billion in donor funding that we currently have.
On the plus side, low unemployment.
We could all move to Las Vegas with the Walkin’ Dude.
Post-flu, almost no consequences. If several hundred million people die, most will be from poor countries, and probably the elderly or very young (although this flu looks like it might hit health people pretty hard).
During the outbreak, however, there could be tremendous economic damage. Air travel could grind to a halt, tourism and shipping could be hard hit, etc.
No, I don’t agree. The dead won’t all be in poor countries. Assuming (worst case scenario) that 35% of people on earth get the flu and half die that means that about 18% of the world’s population will die, roughly a billion people. True, over half will be from India and China but Europe and North America will still lose a few hundred million people themselves.
Since the flu originates in SE Asia I think a global health system will be established. But then again post WW1 and WW2 global political systems (league of nations and UN) were established and they were/are pretty incompetent. So the beat may go on with some incompetent, underfunded global health system being established the same way that incompetent, underpowered global political systems were created after WW1 and WW2.
You could read The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History by John Barry to find out how it affected the world in 1918, and imagine it updated by about a century.
Where do you get an estimate like that? The estimates I’ve heard all range between 50 million and 150 million people.
Obviously, if 20% of the world’s population were to die, it would be a big deal.
I don’t know if the spanish flu is a good comparison for several reasons.
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The world was at the end of a major war at the time. True we have the war on terror now but it is nothing compared to the first world war so people were already traumatized and used to suffering.
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The 1918 flu wasn’t really that deadly. SARS kills about 5% of people who catch it and the 1918 flu killed about 2.5% of people. The new Avian flu kills about 50%, so it is 20x more deadly than the 1918 flu.
I would personally predict a resurgence of religious fundamentalism the whole world over (look how science failed us, it is time to turn back to god, etc) with some kind of legitimate global healthcare system.
On the plus side, low unemployment. And the lines at the bank and supermarket won’t be as long anymore.
Avian has about a 50% mortality rate. During the 1918 flu 28% of the american public got the flu. If 28% of the american public got Avian thene 14% would die, that is 42 million people in america alone.
Hopefully my estimates are wrong. I am just assuming that in the very worst case scenario the flu infects about 30% of the world’s population and kills half of those infected.
50% in the general population or 50% of the people who have actually contracted it? That’s a key distinction to make. It could be that the people who became infected the H5N1 also comprise a particularly susceptible group.
The Wikipedia article also back’s up the mortality estimates Sam Stone gave us, and is about the same as it was in 1918.
That seems to be a pretty good starting point for further investigation.
Good, I’m wrong. I was under the impression that a regular flu infects about 30% of people, so I figured up to 15% of the world’s population could die from H5N1 (the scientific name for this strain of Avian).
Shit, maybe I’m not wrong
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5N1#Human_cases
Most virologists believe something like this will happen sooner or later, and many believe it will happen soon. When it does, H5N1 will inevitably spread throughout the world. Worldwide mortality estimates range all the way from 2–7.4 million deaths (the “conservatively low” pandemic influenza calculation of a flu modeling expert at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) to 1 billion deaths (the bird flu pandemic prediction of one Russian virologist). The estimates of most H5N1 experts range less widely but still widely. In an H5N1 pandemic, the experts guess that somewhere between a quarter of us and half of us would get sick, and somewhere between one percent and five percent of those who got sick would die — the young and hale as well as the old and frail. If it’s a quarter and one percent, that’s 16 million dead; if it’s a half and five percent, it’s 160 million dead. Either way it’s a big number."
The problem is that bird flu as it stands now has about a 50% mortality risk, if bird flu becomes transmittable between humans there is no telling what the mortality risk will be but these low estimates seem to be based on a 1-5% mortality risk, not the current 50% risk we have. Then again maybe the high mortality risk may prevent the flu from spreading from person to person, it may be too deadly to be contageous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avian_influenza#H5N1
Over 100 people have been infected by H5N1, with a mortality rate of over 50%.
Yes, the Wikipedia article I cited gave those numbers too. But there are any number of factors that a simple bar graph can’t reflect. Were they already sick or immunocompromised? What sort of care did they receive? What complications actually killed them? You don’t just get a virus and die. Fever cooks your brain. Pneumonia literally drowns you from all the fluid in your lungs. Those can be treated (though not 100% of the time), and where intervention methods differ, so too will mortality.
50% could hold up over the rest of the population, but as I said, raw numbers aren’t enough, especially when you’re dealing with only ~150 people.
I think most of them were young kids. Plus this was in third world countries in areas with poor healthcare infrastructures.
The flu claimed 250,000 lives in the U.K. and society was severely affected during the pandemic, but longer term, we hardly blinked. A news / current affairs programme on TV recently said that government figures gave a maximum U.K. death count of 750,000. That’s only 1% of the population. It’d cause a very short term blip.
Is that a mortality rate of 50% of those infected, or 50% of those infected and sick enough to have to go to a hospital? Huge difference. The mortality rate of the ordinary flu is pretty high as well, if you only count those who became so sick they had to be hospitalized.
I don’t buy that you can usefully scale up 1918. Modern city-dwellers (in western nations at least) have much better access to hot clean water, better food, electric or gas heating, and above all good old fashioned information about the flu and how it is spread. A million or so casualties in the U.S. is preposterous and even then wouldn’t be long-term crippling. You may as well be speculating on the after-effects of an asteroid hit; devastating but unlikely in the extreme.
Influenza–re: cytokine storms
http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/conditions/11/11/bird.flu.storm.reut/index.html
This could get rather worse than stated.
But that sword can cut both ways. You could also assume that there were people that became ill and died and never made it to the hospital.
Bryan Ekers, I think you are underestimating the potential for harm and overestimating are ability to cope. It is entirely possible that H5N1 could mutate into something that our immune system is unfamiliar with, making it highly deadly. Health care systems can be overwhelmed if they are not properly prepared. Medical personnel could become infected, further complicating matters. Knowing how it is spread won’t matter if it goes airborne. Heck, knowing how diseases are spread doesn’t even help me get through cold & flu season unscathed.
It is possible that H5N1 could fail to mutate. It’s possible that it could mutate into something harmless. This isn’t the same as fretting over an asteroid though. A million deaths is not preposterous. I don’t think we’ll be seeing society getting crippled by this, but there is cause for concern.