Suppose a pandemic kills 10%+ of world population in a few months?

[Silverhair]

This post is to invite readers to speculate on the POLITICAL and SOCIAL result of a massive pandemic that would kill between 10 to 30% of world population in one year.

This is NOT an idle speculation. That is exactly what the World Health Organization (A part of the UN) is afraid may happen if the Asian Bird Flu acquires efficient human-to-human transmission ability. Recent events in SouthEast Asia suggest that it may have picked up that ability. (DU LBN thread http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1198950 )

It has happened before, in 1918 the flu killed an estimated 40 to 100 million people in a few months, (USA fatalities 672,000 on a base of 100 million population) when the world population was about 1.8 billion. Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Flu

Underdeveloped countries were hit harder (India - 17 million dead)than the industrialized West was. If the same pattern holds with then the 3rd world will again get hit hard, and suffer greater casualties in proportion to their population.

So, if the Asian Bird Flu does a modern remake of its 1918 show, how do you think people and national governments will do? What would be the lasting effects?

[NewJeffCT]

1. any problems are just...

any problems with flu deaths are just blown out of proportion by the librul media and is the fault of those European & Canadian drug manufacturers.

[kanrok]

2. More room for me.

[Warpy]

3. The death toll would likely exceed 30% in the developing world

but be well under 10% in the US and western Europe. That's just how it is. Most of the deaths in the developed world would be the very old or the very young. It would devastate the developing world by attacking young, old, and productive adults equally.

Alas, since the developing world (especially China and India) sees part of the problem as having too many mouths to feed, I doubt it would have any lasting effect save one: they would establish their own influenza vaccine production, and it would be state owned.

Africa would be another matter. They've already lost a critical number of productive adults due to HIV. A flu pandemic would send them back to the stone age.

[Silverhair]

6. Actually, the 1918 flu selectively attacked the healthy.

Deaths among the eldery increased only slightly. The peak in the fatalities was among the teen to middle age bracket.

[Nihil]

7. At that time, young != healthy

The majority of the "teen to middle age bracket" had been either in
active service in World War I or suffering from food/health issues
arising from the war.

As a result, they were not as representative of the "healthy" as the
same age bracket would be today (or even ten years earlier).

(Edit: In addition, the tendency for the members of the same age
group to be living/travelling/working together would enhance the
transmission of the flu amongst that strata rather than across the
breadth of the population.)

[signmike]

4. What a Wonderful Opportunity for Condi

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. Very hard to predict.

How much of the turmoil of the 20s and 30s was a result of the pandemic and how much was attributable to WW1. How much did either play in the weakening of the colonial empires of France, Germany, Britain, Belgium, Portugal, etc.? We saw the parallel rise of self-indulgent secularism, F.Scott Fitzgerald's world and the rise of Hollywood, and a great revival movement sweep America with Aimee Semple McPhereson.

There was so much going on there, it's hard to separate them out. Russia was radically changed, by WW1, followed by the flu epidemic, which coincided with the revolution and civil war.

One suggestion I have is that the third world will morph into something else. There is already a slow-motion epidemic in AIDs, and a pandemic flu would act on top of that. As the number of workers drop, the west won't be able to exploit the cheap labor and all the money tied up in that exploitation will be at risk. Result could be world-wide depression -- did the depression of the 30s result from a similar loss of cheap labor worldwide?

[baldguy]

8. The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer.

[Orsino]

9. War on Disease...

Chief weapon will be the complete privatization of all health care, the awarding of no-bid contracts to Halliburton, and debt that could sink aircraft carriers.