Ebola threat

On doing a search I was surprised at the limited posts that mention the ebola pandemic.

Its going to be the human tragedy of our lifetime and I appreciate this is a property and wealth building forum but with a doubling of mortality numbers and 70% mortality rate, this virus has the potential to cripple economies worldwide.

Does anyone else see this as a concern economically other than the World Bank and the IMF?
 
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Tourism ... 50% of Americans reckon they won't travel internationally. If it reaches Australia and I believe it will the east coast will be the first to feel the economic impact. If it ever got into the wild bat populations it'll be game over for Australia. That would mean you probably couldn't eradicate it permanently. Think Hendra virus. All supposition of course but given the sheer incompetence of officials I can't see how this will end well.

There are now illegals moving from the African west coast through the Caribbean and using illegal immigrant routes up into the south of the US through Central America. As it gets worse in Africa the exodus will only increase. There are tens of thousands (of illegals) moving out of Africa into southern Europe on a steady basis. They can't stop them no matter how hard they try. It's only a matter of time.
 
Illegals with Ebola don't get far, unless they are carried on a stretcher. The disease takes hold so quick it will be spotted a mile away. Mass quarantine will have to occur to contain it.
 
Problem for ebola , is that it's spread by contact , where as Flu etc are spread by aerosol so it's harder to pass around .

also it's only spread once the person is sick

It also kills the majority of people who get it , so less people to pass it on.

If you had a virus that was transmitted by aerosol and before people got sick , then you'd have a real problem along the lines of something like I am Legend or another such end of the world type scenario movies.

It may get very nasty in Africa , or somewhere like India , but if it became more widespread in the western world they would be able to stop it by drastic public health / quarantine measures etc , but in the meanwhile it would stop the world economy . In previous centuries , similar lethal viruses , the plague , small pox etc were controllable by quarantine measures.

It may change the face of the world in the next five years or in may fizzle out in the next few months . The powers that be have been caught out in the last month or so , but once they get their act together I think things will be ok.

Could be lots of people wanting to move to Australia so maybe a property boom .

Maybe Tasmania could sell properties for a mill per house and you have to have 20 mill to get an economic visa .....

Cliff
 
On doing a search I was surprised at the limited posts that mention the ebola pandemic.

Its going to be the human tragedy of our lifetime and I appreciate this is a property and wealth building forum but with a doubling of mortality numbers and 70% mortality rate, this virus has the potential to cripple economies worldwide.

Does anyone else see this as a concern economically other than the World Bank and the IMF?

It might be the next Black Death or like the post WW1 flu epidemic that killed more people than the war did, but it might be like the bird flu pandemic of a few years back that came to nothing. I reckon the biggest risk would be infected people going to the Hadj at Mecca and mixing with vast numbers from round the world who then take it home, otherwise I think it will stay a largely African problem.
 
The fear with bird flu was it would cross to humans properly, and there's no way our hospital infrastructure could contain it. With haemorrhagic viruses like ebola, once you reach critical mass you might as well lock victims in their homes to take their chances, and contain it that way, which bird flu couldn't be.
 
Illegals with Ebola don't get far, unless they are carried on a stretcher. The disease takes hold so quick it will be spotted a mile away. Mass quarantine will have to occur to contain it.

ROFL....almost p'd my pants.

There's a whole lota bureaucrats with exactly the same attitude.

So what happens when it gets to India, Pakistan, SE Asia. Mass quarantine I suppose...
 
Buy shares in protective equipment manufacturers. Chinese manufacturing would be very useful for this stuff.

The ridiculous events that have lead to the States debacle are just extraordinary. Bloke takes very sick patient to hospital in his car, flies to the states, goes to hospital and tells the staff who send him home with antibiotics. Hospital staff given little training and wrong equipment. One nurse falls sick, another who worked with her gets a fever and then jumps on a plane! It's not the Ebola virus that scare me it's the people who spread it!

Education can stop it! I think the Aussie government may have it right in not sending help just yet but we should send more cash.
 
Problem for ebola , is that it's spread by contact , where as Flu etc are spread by aerosol so it's harder to pass around
That won't stop mass hysteria in the west. I'm going to set up a business selling smelling salts - that's the cure!

also it's only spread once the person is sick

And once a person is sick they generally don't move much. Transmission to relatives and possibly HCWs.

2/3 of West African transmission is through burial rituals. If burial rituals ( mostly washing dead bodies by relatives) can be stopped then the outbreak will settle down.

It may change the face of the world in the next five years or in may fizzle out in the next few months . The powers that be have been caught out in the last month or so , but once they get their act together I think things will be ok.

I suspect it will fizzle out. If it doesn't then five years is far too long a time frame for this type of disease.
 
I guess it depends on how the virus evolves. If it's around long enough then you would expect it to become less deadly and more spreadable as more transferable forms survive over the longer term. It's not in the viruses interest to rapidly kill the host. The main reason it's so deadly now is because it's jumped from another species and our immune systems have no resistance.
 
What worries me about Ebola is that the numbers of infections are doubling each month. A couple of weeks ago there were about 8000 cases and 4000 deaths.

If the rate of transmission doesn't slow down, currently each victim infects two more, then by June next year there'd be about two million cases and a million deaths. Within a year after that the numbers would be over a billion.

The Black Death could give an indication of what might happen. It wiped out somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million people out of 4 million in the UK during 1348 to 1349. OK, the second wave in 1361 to 1362 only had a 20% fatality rate...

OK, I'm not convinced that's actually going to happen, but the mathematics of the outbreak are rather concerning.

Another concern would be that nearly one in six people in the US, about 50 million in total, don't have any health care provision. If the disease took hold in
one of the major cities over there then there could be a serious problem.
 
i'd like to think we have come a long way with regards to science and medicine compared to the 1300s. still, it is much like a Contagion scenario, might go and watch that now, good movie.
 
the bird flu pandemic of a few years back that came to nothing.

It actually took a lot of doing (and still does) to keep it looking like "it came to nothing".

One of the factors that controlled (and is still probably controlling) the bird flu are the rather "undemoctratic" governments in the main source and the main transport route.

One of course is China, that undertook some pretty brutal (but necessary) control measures in it's south east if any farms showed infection.

The second is the government of Vietnam, who are probably the unsung heros of containing birld flu by preventing it travelling from China into the rest of south east asia - with the army/police having essentially a "shoot to kill" policy on any border incursion by the Chinese (who cross the border to sell live chicken - having said that, any Chinese in Vietnam is not that welcome anyway!) and burning down of any farms inside VN that are suspected of being infected.

The Y-man
 
Hype and panic.

Legionairres was going to kill us all in the late 70s.
AIDS was going to touch everyone in the 80s.
H1N1? Swine Flu?

4mil a year die from pnuemonia. 4k from Ebola.

Move along.
 
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