EU: Bird Flu Pandemic Would Be Akin To Major Recession

[hawkeye]

EU: Bird Flu Pandemic Would Be Akin To Major Recession

BRUSSELS (Dow Jones)--The European Union economy would suffer the effects of a "major recession" but then recover quickly if it suffered a bird-flu pandemic, according to a report published this month by the European Commission.

Assuming a mortality rate of 0.75%, or 3.4 million Europeans, and an average of three weeks off work, with 2006 economic figures, the commission used a mathematical model to forecast a drop in gross domestic product between 2% and 4%.

Commission officials said they made their mortality assumption intentionally high.

Contrary to the Europe's last high-mortality pandemic, the 1918-1920 Spanish flu virus, a bird-flu pandemic today wouldn't cause as much long-term damage. The modern economy is more "flexible" and resistant to shocks, the commission said.

The report focused on tourism and trade, which would be areas most affected. The biggest economic losses would come from absent workers and reduced travel.

Researchers used similar findings that have calculated the possible effects in Canada and the U.S. Similarities in the physical health of Europeans and North Americans mean the effects of an outbreak are likely to be comparable.

The paper also analyzed the Spanish flu outbreak in Europe in 1918-20 to determine possible numbers of casualties. That flu killed between 30 million and 60 million people and left the region economically devastated.

 

[Boccaccio]

Re: EU: Bird Flu Pandemic Would Be Akin To Major Recession

This estimate of the average worker only being off of work for several weeks, followed by a quick recovery, seems way too optimistic.

More likely, in my contrarian opinion:

-- many workers taking extended amounts of time off, even to the point of quitting jobs

-- schools substantially affected, with rippling effects (parents staying home to care for children, the actual school workers themselves being home, the feeder industries for schools)

-- much larger effects on tourism and casual travel than just what a major recession shows

-- multiple waves of a pandemic, adding to the uncertainty

I don't know about the rest of you (I'm new to FT after the business over at FW), but I am making my plans to shelter in place (aka SIP, aka hunker down) for several weeks AT THE LEAST after the first major reports of P2P on a larger-than-Indonesia-cluster hit the news. I'll probably delay my hunkering down for a couple of days while I add to my supplies.

Then, after several weeks of monitoring as many news sites as I can, I'll decide what to do next. It may mean venturing into the normal world of commerce, carefully, or it may mean buttoning-up for several months.

I don't expect everyone to do this, but I expect some fraction will.

And contrary to the European study, I think our "just-in-time" economy is efficient, but sensitive to disruptions. If container ships from Asia are delayed for even a week or two (a la the West Coast port strike a few years back), JIT-dependent factories go idle.

And so on, for a long list of disruptive events.

By contrast, the world of 1918 was far more isolated into semi-self-sufficient pockets of industry and food production. Less commuting, less dependency on a complex web of shipped products, a "slower pace of life."

Also, the norm at that time was for at least a full-time care provider at home (usually a wife, but also sometimes grandparents living at home, extended family, etc.). This meant a family could keep children at home easily. Today, the disruptions of having children out of school would just by themselves be enormously important. (Though perhaps more nanny care might emerge, neighborhood child watches, etc....all of these having pandemic risks themselves, of course.)

So my estimate is that the effects would be worse, at their peak, than most past recessions in the U.S or Europe, though perhaps not as long in duration. (Especially as compared to the Great Depression, which arguably lasted for 6-8 years, some say until 1940-41.)

-- Boccaccio

 

[Mellie]

Re: EU: Bird Flu Pandemic Would Be Akin To Major Recession

Boccaccio, welcome! I don't see much contrarian in your post. Anyone who had dealings with the aftermath of Katrina has a hint of what's to come, only multiplied many times over if communities do not plan before the fact.

Having the option to "button up" for the longer term is what it's all about. If you're not part of the problem and having to go out and mingle, you will be part of the solution. Ro, keep the Ro low.

None of us knows exactly what we will do in the moment, but having options will be critical. Plan for the worst and hope for the best.

Thanks for your good posts.

Mellie

 

[Boccaccio]

Re: EU: Bird Flu Pandemic Would Be Akin To Major Recession

Boccaccio, welcome! I don't see much contrarian in your post. Anyone who had dealings with the aftermath of Katrina has a hint of what's to come, only multiplied many times over if communities do not plan before the fact.

Having the option to "button up" for the longer term is what it's all about. If you're not part of the problem and having to go out and mingle, you will be part of the solution. Ro, keep the Ro low.

Mellie

You raise a point worth discussing: exactly what constitutes a community planning before the fact? And how much difference will it make, overall?

A community plan likely, from all that I am seeing and from what I think government is likely to be able to do, means some publicity (which I think will mostly fall on deaf ears), maybe some guidelines for "first responders," maybe upgrades to some communication gear. These are relatively inexpensive things to do, and are useful in various emergencies. In my area, northern California (like you, I think), this is useful for earthquake recovery.

But truly substantial readiness, such as having expanded beds for flu patients, stockpiles of Tamiflu, more nurses....this just isn't going to happen. It just isn't. Budgets won't allow it, and taxes are not going to be raised to do these things. Not in this universe. (Understand that I am not advocating more taxes....just want to make that clear.)

Nor will there be stockpiles of food. For logistical and business reasons, supermarkets are where the food is, and this is limited to a JIT-type inventory. (If stockpiles of food were to be maintained, much thought would have to go into storage conditions, shelf lives of food, how it is to be distributed, etc. A major planning issue, which I just don't see happening in 95% of American cities or towns. Perhaps in Mormon communities, which have a very long tradition of stockpiling (the famous "one year supply" goal for each household).

My sisters was in the middle of Katrina, living near Canal Street in New Orleans. She, like so many, voluntarily chose to stay, to "ride it out." She ended up being stranded for several days when the levees failed.

Having watched this event closely, I disagree with the charges and countercharges that government--of either side, Democrat, Republican, at any level--was "unprepared." Except for the issue of the levees themselves, things worked about as best they could. And even the levee failures were understood to be possible, even probable (* More on Katrina at the end of this message).

Most who stayed behind in NO did so because they had done so in the past, such as during Camille. Just as many stay here in California, despite the risk of earthquakes (and wildfires).

How does this relate to bird flu? Most communities will do little except slightly add to the general news that is out there. A few advisories, the aforementioned slight upgrades of communications gear, etc. There will be no significant expansions of hospitals (takes too long, budgets already barely able to pay for most community hospitals, hospitals already failing in most California cities, for example). There may be some stockpiles of Tamiflu, but this is primarily a federal government issue at this point (policy debates ongoing, doses being acquired and stockpiled).

The most important planning communities can do is to take steps to ensure the continuity of water, gas, and electricity. This may mean equipping key workers with masks and "social distancing" them as soon as a pandemic is evident (for example, I sure do hope my power company linemen are urged to stay in their trucks as much as possible, to avoid contacting other employees, to basically do their job and stay away from people...this increases the chances they'll be able to keep the lines up, the transformers running, etc.). I hope some planning is happening along these lines.

For basic food and water, as you say and I say and as most seem to be saying, we are basically on our own. And this makes a lot of sense, in that stockpiling of food and water and supplies is best done by individuals, not communities. (At least in America this is historically and socially how this has worked...it would be a stretch to imagine converting to the kind of communal food storage (rice) that, say, villages in some parts of Asia often have.)

* More on Katrina. On the Saturday before the hurricane hit (Monday morning), I watched a fascinating series of interviews and reports on CNN and Fox News. I particularly remember seeing a Dr. Joe Bastardi (whom I have since Googled, which is how I remember the exact name) of an outfit called Accuweather, in Pennsylvania. He showed the likely track of Katrina and the high likelihood that the levees would be breached! This was on Saturday, and Katrina was then a Cat 5 and was headed for a nearly dead-center strike of New Orleans. A Louisiana State professor (since quoted widely) was also saying much the same thing, that the levees had been built to withstand a Cat 3 and not anything stronger, and that it was looking like Katrina could inundate New Orleans if the levees failed.

I called my sister on Sunday to urge her to evacuate with her husband (ex, actually, but it's complicated) and their cat. I specifically told her what I'd seen about Katrina being beyond the capacity of the levee system. She said she'd heard all this (indeed, the Times-Picayune had been running these hurricane reports for several years, as we have now all had time to see over and over again). But she said their house had withstood hurricanes for 140 years and that she was staying.

I urged her to fill as many containers with water as possible and to go out and get more groceries. She said they were already filling containers but that most shops and stores were already closed for the hurricane. (As it turned out, they certainly had more than the ludicrously-minimal "3-day supply" recommended by some. They had plenty of food and water. Their battery-powered radio turned out to be one of the best things they had.)

Like a hundred thousand or so others, they decided to stay. And it was not for lack of transportation (two cars, both destroyed in the later flooding) or because the highways were too crowded (when I talked to her on Sunday afternoon, I-10 going to Baton Rouge was shown on CNN as being open and clear, with relatively light traffic).

There were certainly cases where people could not get out--the nursing homes, the hospitals, etc.--and even cases where "poor people" could not easily get out, but mostly people didn't get out for the same reason my sister didn't get out: they chose to stay. (The large number of flooded and wrecked cars in the poorest sections is ample evidence that plenty of cars were available for people to evacuate with...they just decided in most cases to ride out the storm. Hindsight about how government should have forced them to leave (how? at gunpoint? not enough cops in all of Louisiana to have done this) is just that, 20/20 hindsight.)

And as it turned out, Katrina weakened slightly and _missed_ a dead center strike of New Orleans--it could've been much, much worse. But as Joe Bastardi, the LSU professor, and several others had warned, and as the Times-Picayune long reports had warned, the levees failed, even with a weakened storm and a near miss. And once a city that is 15-30 feet below sea level has its levees breached, that's all she wrote. The bowl filled up and stayed filled up until the water was eventually pumped out....this is what destroyed a hundred thousand houses and apartments.

And it will happen again if and when a full Cat 4 or 5 hurricane hits New Orleans directly. Not even the Corps of Engineers will say the levees can stop a Cat 5 from breeching them.

The lessons are clear: people are responsible for their own choices, first and foremost. They need to think about the kinds of structures they live in (for earthquake and fire reasons), the safety of their neighborhood (crime), and their locations (river floods, earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes).

The lessons for bird flu are not as clearcut as this, but people still need to make their plans as best they can. And this means having a lot more than just a 3-day supply of food and water.

Can we exhort people to make these kinds of plans? I am not particularly optimistic. Several decades of telling people about earthquakes, and still they don't have even flashlights or food. After the Loma Prieta quake in my area (near Santa Cruz, CA), I saw long lines (hundreds) of people waiting to be allowed in a few at a time into darkened supermarkets and drug stores to buy food, batteries, etc. Most of those interviewed said they were used to eating out everyday and had nothing to eat at home (!). And I'll bet most of them, or their children two decades later, still don't have much at home. Looking at the huge increase in the number of restaurants, taco places, fast food chains over my adult life, and looking at the empty shelves in my bachelor brother's apartment (the fridge having the obligatory small amount of bachelor food, some vodka in the freezer, the usual), I think modern Americans are less and less prepared than ever before. We are a "Just in time, eat two meals a day at fast food places or restaurants, live the fast line life" kind of culture. Not everybody, but a larger chunk of the population than a generation ago. And the comparisons with 1918 beggar the imagination.

If a pandemic hits and people need to stay home, there are going to be a whole lot of people eating the last of their Ho-Hos and Ding-Dongs and boxes of Cap'n Crunch in the first week. And then things are going to get tense....

--Boccaccio

 

[Laidback Al]

Re: EU: Bird Flu Pandemic Would Be Akin To Major Recession

Boccaccio, nice first-hand discussion about people failing to leave New Orleans before Katrina . . . "they chose to stay". Implicit in that choice to stay was an assumption that "bad things won't happen to me".

I think that this same assumption is what hampers people from preparing for a possible pandemic. An H5N1 pandemic will spread relatively quickly, but not all areas will be affected at the same time. It will be an interesting phenomenon to see how local populations and communities react based on a perceived threat even if H5N1 is not yet within the local community. What will be the tipping point that will spur people into action? Will that tipping point be the same for everyone in a specific community? The more orderly the hysteria, the more likely local communities can survive and remain functioning.

In a pandemic with multiple waves possibly lasting for months, it will simply not be possible for people to hunker down for that long without social and community interaction. If everyone did so, we would no longer have a functioning society. I believe, as you note, that maintainance of local community infrastructure will be the key to keeping us from being blown back to a stone age lifeway.

 

[Boccaccio]

Re: EU: Bird Flu Pandemic Would Be Akin To Major Recession

Boccaccio, nice first-hand discussion about people failing to leave New Orleans before Katrina . . . "they chose to stay". Implicit in that choice to stay was an assumption that "bad things won't happen to me".

I think that this same assumption is what hampers people from preparing for a possible pandemic. An H5N1 pandemic will spread relatively quickly, but not all areas will be affected at the same time. It will be an interesting phenomenon to see how local populations and communities react based on a perceived threat even if H5N1 is not yet within the local community.

I agree that most people simply don't think bad things will happen. And bad things mostly don't, actually. Even here in earthquake country, the vast majority of people were essentially utterly unaffected by the last two major quakes, Loma Prieta and Northridge. In both areas, one had to go to damaged areas to "gawk" at the collapsed apartment buildings, the fire damage to the Marina District, etc. Of course, in both quakes there were collapsed freeway structures and overpasses, which affected traffic for months or longer. And condemned buildings, which forced relocations. But these were, importantly for the point, things which did not directly mean people should have "prepared"--the loss of the Cypress Structure in Oakland was not something people could prepare for, individually.

There's something in being a "prepper" (a term favored on some of these bird flu groups or boards) that is akin to being a "survivalist" (a term not favored here, and one which can rightly suggest someone moving off to the wilds of Oregon to live a mountain man life, with guns....not all survivalists are this extreme, of course).

An old girlfriend of mine, who's a licensed psychologist/therapist, once characterized me as being "hypervigilant." I later Googled this term and found some parts of the definition which are true of me.

(Not that I am hypervigilant, or even especially wise, in all matters! Amongst other things, I don't go to doctors, ever. A failing on my part, I acknowledge. Something I keep planning to change....)

On things related to preparing for the future, I think I'm indeed pretty vigilant, even hypervigilant. I've cringed to see my neighbors now responsible for maintaining our water (a well and tank, serving our hill, with 15 households) continue to "not think ahead" and to just let things deteriorate. They thought I was "weird" (one of their words, not mine) when I asked technical questions about the size of the pump, etc., as an explanation of why the main tank was running dry so often (with implications for our water, for fire reasons, and even for our homeowners insurance policies!).

(For those interested in the details, as a snapshot of how a "prepper" mentality can affect such a real-world situation, here's a snapshot of the situation and the outcome. Lack of pictures and a lot more words than I'm prepared to type may make it hard to grasp the explanation, but I'll try.

Basically, we have a deep well from which is water is pumped to the surface and then up about 350 more feet to a storage tank at the top of the hill. From there it is gravity-fed to the lower households. The houses up near the top need local pressure systems to raise the pressure to normal levels (about 50 PSI). Several years ago the water committee listened to a vendor who said that a less expensive pump would make a good replacement for the 10 horsepower, 3-phase electricity, 18-stage pump that had been installed in 1972 and then replaced later with a pump of the same specs. (I don't have space to tell you all what "stages" are in a pump, except that they're how a pump can pump more than just one "suck" on a straw (if one sucks on a straw or hose or pipe, the most that can ever be sucked is equivalent to about 30 inches of mercury or 33 feet of water....this is just basic physics. Pumps use multiple stages to pump water to greater heights.)

The replacement pump several years ago was a 7.5 horsepower, single-phase, 13-stage pump. None of this was ever publicized to the rest of us (I had been head of the water committee several years earlier), none of it was described in the minutes of meetings, etc.

Anyway, we had three years of inadequate water flow, including occasional emptying of the storage tank (which is very bad news, for multiple reasons, even including bacterial problems due to back-siphoning). The water committe and "leadership" (President of the Water Association) exhorted us to "use less water" and rigorous irrigation and water sprinkling schedules were mailed around. This went on for two years after the problems first hit big time.

A consultant was hired, he said he was "looking for leaks, where the water must be going" (the assumption being that water was leaking off someplace, though a simple calculation showed that there would have been some mighty big "wet spots" if this amount of water were leaking away). The consultant found no leaks, wished us good luck, and was paid.

And so on. So in the summer of 2004, after a spate of tank emptyings and more "we have to conserve water!" letters sent out, I brushed off my hypervigilant thinking cap and went out and did the following"

-- I walked the hill, top to bottom and back, nothing the locations of all faucets, pump locations, and elevations (using my GPS ETrex Legend to get elevations from the satellites...yet another example of where survivalist/camping supplies and tools are useful to have)

-- I took a satellite photo of the hill (from Mapquest, I think it was, though Google Earth is now a better choice) and marked the locations

-- from this, I knew the precise distance up the hill the water had to be pumped, and what this entailed for how many stages needed.

-- but was our pump adequate? Finding nothing in the minutes of what kind of pump we had, and phoning the President (of our Association) and him having no idea either, I dug through copies of the purchase orders and found something with some interesting numbers attached. Inputting the precise string of letters and numbers into Google, the hits I got showed the item was a Grundfos brand of pump, 7.5 horsepower, single-phase, 13-stage pump, rated for 60 gallons per minute. And 60 GPM was what we needed to meet fire and usage requirements, but a check of the GPM gauge at the wellhead only showed 14 GPM!

(To complicate things for readers here, we actually have two storage tanks, one lower than the other. Water is pumped first to the lower tank, and also used from there by some households, and then a second booster pump pushes some of this water to upper, main tank. All of these heights got measured and noted in my trek that day.)

-- checking further, and calculating the heights, it was obvious what was going on: a 13-stage pump is just "not enough pump" to pump water the requisite height, at least at anything more than a "gasping" level.

-- the answer was so clear and so obvious to any "hypervigilant" person (scientist, engineer, diagnostician like "Dr. House" on that great t.v. show) that I was stunned. Three hours of walking, measuring, calculating, and Web searching had revealed the solution: go back to the size of pump we USED to have and that had been specced by the designer of our hill's water delivery system back in 1972.

-- I wrote up my conclusions, attached the maps and calculations and even some explanations of "stages" and "hydrostatics" and the relevant equations, and sent copies to the Water Committee and the President.

-- deadening silence

-- when I asked the President, my immediate neighbor, what was going on, he shrugged and said they had been told by the pump vendor that the pump they'd had installed "was a 60 GPM" pump and that my calculations looked like garbage.

-- I felt like screaming at him: yes, 60 GPM, but only at the height relevant to that particular pump! The height in our system neeed a pump with more stages!

(As it happens, most deep water pumps come at various numbers of stages, usually ones in a few stages, in 8 stages, in 13 stages, in 18 stages, in 25 stages, and even some in more stages, for truly deep wells or high pumping distances.)

-- I asked him why he thought 13 stages was enough for our system....he drew a blank and said he'd get back to me. When he did, a week later, he said their paperwork showed they'd calculated the well depth to be 250 feet and the vendor had then told them the pump would be enough.

-- But, I reminded him, the water not only had to be brought to the surface, down at the bottom of the hill, but then pumped a further few hundred feet to the first storage tank. Another blank look.

-- He said he'd take my calculations to the next meeting of the Water Committee, scheduled in a few weeks.

-- Not believing me, nor my detailed calculations and equations, they contacted the water irrigation company that had sold them the pump. Apparently this company was only used to providing irrigation pumps, so they only calculated the pump needed based on getting the water up to the surface....this was all they knew.

-- So the light gradually dawned on them, or some of them.

-- A month later, another well pump company was consulted and my calculations were completely confirmed.

-- So the old pump was sold off for some slight credit, a new 18-stage pump with the 60 GPM capacity was installed, and we were all assessed the money needed to do this.

Two years later, there have been no repeats of the tank-emptying fiascos, the water situation is generally fine, and the silly warnings about how we all need to limit toilet flushes and sprinkler usage have all mysteriously ended.

They still think I'm "weird," mainly because the idea of doing calculations and measurements and not taking the word of an "expert" (who actually misunderstood our particular situation, and was unaware of pumping up hills issues) is alien to them. I could see their eyes glaze over as I verbally explained how water is pumped up hills, how height of a column of water translates to pressure, and hence to "stages" in a pump.

This is part of our innumerate society. And this is how small communities, small systems, are often just plain lacking in depth of knowledge. (Not that bigger systems or governments are necessarily better in all ways, but at least they don't have ill-prepared, unvigilant neighbors screwing up in such ways.)

This is one reason I try to be on good terms with my neighbors, but don't try to rely on them for my own needs.

(And don't get me started on our recent problems with the water failing bacteriological contamination tests....I know why, in all likelihood, and wrote them a report citing the reasons (backflow and siphoning from lawn soaker hoses, loose connections in the dirt, sprinkler systems resting in horse pastures, etc.) and they just have blank expressions...but they brought in a "consultant" who told them our system was subject to, drum roll, siphonage and backwash of contaminated water into the main pipes and tank!)

I apologize for this long detour, but you all were warned it was a detour. I beiieve this is a relevant story about preparations, calculations, and "vigilance" (thinking, reflecting, observing, measuring...) in ordinary situations.

Interestingly, on a computer group I sometimes post to, I described this adventure as an example of engineering innumeracy. The science fiction writer Neal Stephenson, of "Snow Crash" fame, commented that he thought this article could be expanded into a very nice piece in a major magazine about how these small community systems work, and how they fail, and how the inability of people to think about numbers and equations and diagrams has some very real implications for safety and expenses.

--Boccaccio