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Swine flu could lower U.K.'s GDP
An airline passenger wearing a protective face mask arrives at Gatwick Airport in southern England
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Bill Radke: The British economy could suffer significantly from swine flu. That's according to an influential report out this morning. And we get more on that from London and reporter Stephen Beard.
Stephen Beard: The report from Ernst & Young says that with the additional effect of swine flu, Britain's GDP could fall by 7.5 percent this year. The forecast is based on the British Government's own predictions.
The Health Ministry reckons there will be 100,000 new cases of swine flu a day by next month. In time, half the population could be infected.
So far, the virus has been relatively mild. Mortality rates are expected to be low. But Peter Spencer of the Ernst & Young team, speaking on British T.V., said the economic consequences could be dire:
Peter Spencer: Obviously people will be taking time off work. They will also be avoiding crowded places. So put those two effects together and you've got a whole range of industries which will see output and demand knocked back.
The World Health Organization says swine flu is spreading around the globe with "unprecedented speed."
In London, this is Stephen Beard for Marketplace.
Swine flu if it mutates in the Autumn will be devastating. But the problem is that no one listens, including the media. Swine flu if it mutates to something equivalent to the Spanish flu of 1918/1919 (Spanish flu was a swine flu variant) has the same potential to kill humans on an unprecidented scale as it did 90 years ago. The problem is that both swine and avian are constantly mutating into something different. So by the time you have isolated and made a vaccine for the last one, it has changed again and circumvented the old guard and becomes useless. The problem is that this happens all the time and where drugs become irrelevant. The reason, it takes three months to develop an antidote and 6 months to mass produce and distribute it (a logistic nightmare in itself alone) and where on average therefore the vast majority have to wait 9 months for the cure. The problem is that even in slow coach travel times 1918, the Spanish flu which took between 20 and 100 million lives worldwide (there is no authoritive number but where it is estimated between the two), did its deadliest between week 14 and week 26, some 12 weeks at least before the masses would ever receive the drug cure presently. The 1918 killer flu had a very similar circumstance as today, a mild version before the deadly version arrived in the fall of 1918 with a vengeance. The only way that this deadly killer can be stopped therefore, if anyone is listening out there, is through a complete overhaul of modern farming and husbandry methods and to give considerable financial help to those who breed the livestock that we all eat. Basically as a single example, just stop them sleeping with the animals on cold nights in the tropics as this is how the flu virus passes from pig to chicken to man – eventually; and where the pig is the receptive incubator. Simply give them a heater and fuel, a much cheaper option that global suicide in both human and econmic terms as it will be. For the ‘Tropics’ are where some of the most eminent virologists and micribiologists in the field say is the place where the killer virus will emerge.The philosophy of not letting it happen in the first place. The drugs strategy is futile and it is only a matter of time before the killer strain that will kill literally 100s millions appears. The problem is that the vast profits of drug companies and the government's ignorance to the real facts will be the nails in all our coffins. The statistics and potential speak for themselves,
World Population 2 billion – 1920
Range of deaths
20mil/2billion = 1 in 100
100mil/2billion = 5 in 100
World Population now at 6.8 billion now equates to,
1 in 100 - 70 million min. today
5 in 100 - 340 million max. today
But, these figures could well be higher, as rapid world transit now makes for faster and wider transmission than in 1918.
I therefore say lets start now as I have been saying for the past three years and defeat this mass killer like no other by field work and not the futile drugs strategy that will do very little indeed to save lives. For presently we are all fooling ourselves.
If we put only £50 billion into this field work globally ( a small price for the human nightmare and financial melt-down that a global equivalent to Spanish flu would bring),we could eradicate the situation but where this £50 billion will no doubt end up alternatively in the pockets of the large pharmaceutical companies with little effect whatsoever. Get real everyone before it is basically too late and I am not joking – force governments to change their strategies from something that is impotent presently to something that will eradicate the problem at source. Common sense really but where currently no one seems to have any.
Worryingly also is the fact that as examples of other problems on the horizon is that the United States makes only 20 percent of its flu vaccines it uses and my country Britain makes zero percent of its flu vaccines, as all its flu vaccines are produced abroad. When a killer pandemic happens it will be hard for the producing countries to release any before their own people are serviced. Little known but true (Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota – 16.07.09).
I have been stopped from putting these comments and facts out by the media before. Let’s hope that minds are fully opened now and that the real solution can be heard and not just the bottom-line for drug companies!
Dr David Hill
