Ebola has been a word on prime time news every night for the last couple months, and as Matthew Chiu addresses in his blog, the economic effects of the outbreak might be severe. As the epidemic turns into a pandemic, many predictions for the coming months are being blown away, and revised. But how are these predictions formulated? A 2007 article by Thomas A. Guarett suggests many economical predictions for epidemics are based off of the 1918 influenza outbreak that ravaged the globe after the First World War. However a lot has changed since those days.
It makes me wonder how the modernized world will respond to a pandemic. There are many new helpful factors being set into play: such as technology, transportation, global support. Governments however are still not equipped to deal with this scale of crisis, can we trust the politicians of the world to keep the outbreak under control? As the disease spreads, so to it will spread astronomical healthcare, insurance costs will follow with, not to mention the death toll. Labour and food shortages are generally the local consequence but what will the effect be on the rest of the world? Can the economic effects of a pandemic like this, really be predicted?