What if it really happens?
Gold, treasuries and drug stocks will inevitably profit - says an article dealing with the business side of Avian Flu in Business Week. It turns out that the losers would be businesses associated with heavy coming and going: travel, mass sport events, cinemas, theatres, shopping malls, big retail-centers, commuting, anything that draws large numbers of people.
The winners could be traditional safe savings forms: gold, treasury papers, plus anything that helps you to do business with a minimal risk of contacting people and objects carrying the deadly virus: telecommuting, telework, telecommunication.

At the sam time it is important to note that tt may be only a matter of time before bird flu hits the world of commerce; and not because of a real pandemic, but because of psychology of business. Commerce is based on confidence to a large extent, so if people lose their confidence say in the safety of certain places and/oor activities, they'll simply ignore it - if they can.

The Asian Response
Asian Development Bank (ADB) has a regular update on what is going on in Asia to combat avian flu.

Cure!

The best way to cure your scare is to divert your attention from this whole birdflu-hoax to something entirely different. I decided to help you to do exactly this. From now on I'll include here every now and then a piece from Google-Video to cheer you (and myself) up. So here we go!

US Investigation of Japanese Tamiflu-deaths.
I reported on the Japanese deaths from Tamiflu. Now U.S. regulators are studying the deaths of 12 children in Japan who took Roche AG's flu-fighting drug Tamiflu, officials said on Thursday, but they said it was difficult to tell whether the drug played a role in any of the cases. Here is the full story from Reuters.

SmirkingChimp on Pharmaprofits

The drug industry's image problems are beginning to hurt pharmaceutical companies where it matters most - at the bottom line. Read the full story in the Business section of The NYT. You'll see what happens if profits shrink: factories have to be closed, people are sent on dole and when the pandemic comes, you will be helpless, because there will be no medicines ....... brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Panic, Politics and Profit - Tamiflu Kills?
Well this Japanese article is stating exactly that. Tamiflu linked to deaths of 2 teens goes the headline of a Kyodo despatch dated 13.11., and says that two teenage boys who took the antiviral drug Tamiflu exhibited abnormal behavior thatled to their deaths, with one jumping in front of an oncoming truck last year and the other falling from the ninth floor of a building earlier this year, health ministry and other sources said Saturday.

The Japanese newsagency goes on saying that the drug in that country carries a note listing impaired consciousness, abnormal behaviors, hallucination and other psychological and neurological symptoms as possible serious side effects. The ministry of health in Tokyo is therefore considering making a fresh warning about them, following its decision to increase the stockpile of the drug amid growing fears about a possible pandemic of a new type of influenza as birdflu deaths rise across Asia.

And if you want to know whT readers of the above information think about panic, politics and profit, read further: there is a very interesting discussion going on in the forum attached to the information.

This is sick!
I mean the fact itself that a major business weekly on its website is giving tips as to how to reshape one's investment portfolio in view of the coming birdflu pandemie.
Read it - if you wish - here.

Drugs are expensive, and life is cheap.

This is from a very intelligent article from The Guardian, which analysing the contradictions between the profit-hunger of the big pharmaceutical companies and the need of the poor (and also the not so poor countries.)
The point aorund which it is revolving is, of course birdflu and the responses of the drug industry and some other players. Interestingly enough The Guardian is not too pessimistic: it has seen a glimpse of hope in the way Roche, the Swiss phamra giant have responded to the striking deficit in the supply of Tamiflu. "something significant is happening. Roche's change of heart, in the face of world pressure, has a lesson beyond bird flu. There has been some tacit acknowledgment that great potential power over life and death should not reside in a single boardroom."
A good read.

Y2Flu?
As you klnow, I'm collecting mostly pieces of information that come off the mainstream - which is generating fear concerning the "coming pandemie of birdflu". Well, I've found now one, which is absolutely off-mainstream, though it has been published on a very much mainstream site. Maybe the editors of big media don't beleive themselves what they're writing about? Anyway, here it goes:

...the real crisis here affects our mental health. With the epidemic of fear and false alarm. With the pandemic of paranoia and overblown, media-fed frenzy. With the newspaper and magazine and 24-hour-cable-news mill that runs most efficiently and ferociously on the grist of impending doom. The aritcle continues here.

Am I Spreading the Virus?
BBC Magazine's editors have made me think about it: am I also spreading the birdflu virus of fear? Am I also risking the lives of those who come here and then dismiss the possibility of a pandemic of birdflu becaus I make them feel that this is just another hoax to make some people richer?
I hope not.

What the Kiwis Think About it?
I came accross this forum on a NZ-site. One of the participants is wondering what if birdflu, is just like Y2K and everyone makes this massive deal out of it and we go and buy baked beans and surgical masks and live in our bomb shelters and die anyway - or in the case of Y2K, nothing happens? We could do a George Bush and keep the enitre country on "orange alert" for three years, and live in a state of permanent fear, because the media we see keeps telling us that we are constantly under threat.

Guys. Please chill. The media loves a good sensational story. And while the danger is there I agree, the disease has not mutated anyway.

About Fear and the Bush Admin.

Since I'm mostly concerned about the worldwide pandemic of fear that the avian flu scare is producing I cannot help including this article on "The New Fear". No comment.
How fine that a not so silent minority still keeps its sense of (black) humor!

More on the economic impacts. (Who profits?)

It is hard to calm down when you keep on reading articles like this dealing with the possible economic impacts of a worldwide pandemic of avian flu, which, as the writer says, could shut down travel, disrupt supply chains, overwhelm health care systems and devastate economies globally. USA Today cites an economist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who estimated in a 1999 article that a pandemic flu could cost the U.S. alone $71.3 billion to $165 billion.
It also quotes Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, who thinks that those economists that have looked at this have likened it to a catastrophic depression. Travel bans, sick workers and panic could quickly shut down international trade, and we
could well go into utter chaos worldwide for over a year. Osterholm published an article on the topic in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs.
Thanks God there are some who are well prepared. Economist Sherry Cooper and global portfolio strategist Donald Coxe in an Aug. 12 "Investor's Guide to Avian Flu" report from BMO Nesbitt Burns Research predict that soaring death rates would end the housing boom and create a vast oversupply. They also think that
depending on its length and severity, its economic impact could be comparable to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
According to the paper, some businesses, mainly those with facilities in Asia, are already beginning to plan for potential disruption, says Tim Daniel, chief operating officer of International SOS, a Philadelphia-based firm that provides medical assistance and security services in more than 60 countries. Preparation before an outbreak is key, says Daniel, whose company sells a 120-page planning guide.
"It's one thing to have a plan to deal with a bomb attack or an earthquake," says Daniel. "A pandemic will play out differently. It tends to be in waves and could last many months."
Daniel advises companies to consider having employees stay home if they are sick, bringing in food and water so essential workers could be quarantined on the job, and creating work-at-home arrangements.

How to Protect Yourself from avian flu
Some seemingly useful practical advice from a Canadian source.

The flu has a price tag! - How nice!
Pandemic could carry $950B cost: World Bank - reads a headline of the Canadian
CBC News. Quoting an official of the World Bank they say that an birdflu
pandemic could cost the world economy as much as $950 billion Cdn in lost growth. Health and government officials gathered in Geneva on Monday for the world's largest-ever conference on the disease, and Dr. David Nabarro, United Nations co-ordinator for avian and human influenza estimated that price tag for one year if the disease caused the same kind of disruption as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, said World Bank economist Milan Brahmbhatt.

A more severe pandemic would end up costing even more as manufacturing ground to a halt and service industries closed shop, he added.

Can Vaccines Make Money?
A really 100 $ question, and the answer is worth billions. Read this in Forbes and you'll get a glimpse at the way big pharma is in fact thinking about your health. Or is it only a sole "analyst" (Geoffrey Porges from Sanford C. Bernstein, quoted by teh paper) who thinks that anti-flu vaccines and the like are profitable only on the short run, and on the long run the pharma companies should concentrate on drugs for asthma and diabetes patients.
So if you ever had the illusion that a profit oriented business is concerned about your health, forget it: they are concerned only about your money.

7.1 Billion for What?
G.W. Bush, the president of the US has recently outlined a $7.1 billion plan to prepare for the danger of a pandemic influenza outbreak. He said he wanted to stockpile enough vaccine to protect 20 million Americans against the current strain of bird flu - which experts see a waste of money, or, rather a bonanza for the pharma industry. This string becomes even more clear if we consider, that the president also said the US must approve liability protection for the pharma companies; i.e. not only should these multinationals receive even more cash from taxpayers's money but they will be releived of any responsibility should it turn out that what they sell as lifesaving vaccines are hazardous to your health.