Posted on 10/17/2014 5:36:58 AM PDT by blam
Sam Ro
October 17, 2014
The spread of the Ebola virus has been dominating headlines in recent weeks.
While the ultimate death toll may be limited, the economic impact could potentially be significant.
The "'fear factor' associated with Ebola appears more significant than in past instances of pandemic concern, in our view," Goldman Sachs' Kris Dawsey writes.
Dawsey studied how other recent pandemic events ultimately played out in the US and Hong Kong.
"Recent episodes of pandemic concern in the US — including SARS in 2003, bird flu (H5N1) in 2005, and swine flu (H1N1) in 2009 — resulted in little if any discernible effect on retail sales or tourist arrivals," Dawsey found.
Still Dawsey offers downside and worst-case scenarios: 9/11 in the US and SARS in Hong Kong. From his note (emphasis ours):
... For the downside scenario, we think the example of the September 11 terrorist attacks could be informative. In the aftermath of the attacks, demand for air travel temporarily dried up, while some people reportedly preferred to avoid crowded public places such as subway stations, shopping malls, etc. At the time, concerns were further exacerbated by limited-scale anthrax attacks unrelated to the September 11th attacks themselves. If the Ebola situation was to worsen much more than expected, it is possible to imagine that a similar atmosphere of fear could arise. In terms of broader macroeconomic effects, Roberts (2009) estimates the drag on GDP growth from the September 11 attacks at roughly 0.5 percentage point for the year 2001. Some of this drag was certainly due to direct destruction of factors of production, and as such we would view this as an upper-bound on the drag from fear/risk-aversion effects.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Worst case? When Ferguson Meets Ebola.
For understanding why our official medicos and politicos are mishandling the Ebola threat so badly, read The Plague by Camus again, and reflect that it was based on ancient human impulses that never change. Look at the 1918-19 flu for some other lessons. Millions died. Very big mistakes were made and important lessons learned, most of them forgotten.
The “good news” in this mess is that the cities that get hit first and worst by Ebola will provide lessons for the rest of us. I think we will learn the hard way to segregate standard hospitals from fever/Ebola treatment centers. Admitting a flood of Ebola patients is a sure way to nuke a hospital as effectively as a bio-weapon WMD attack over time. The hospital will be contaminated and much of the staff dead, of the ones who didn’t run away early.
Eventually we’ll see newly-created fever camps become the only refuge available to anybody showing flu symptoms. Hospitals will turn them away, maybe with police assistance and the offer of a handy bus driven by a fellow in a haz-mat suit to take them to their new/last home. What’s behind Door Number Two? Don’t worry, you’ll find out later. Maybe you only have the still-spreading Enterovirus D-68, AKA the Guatemalan Flu. You won’t know for sure until your eyeballs are bleeding. Unless maybe you caught the big-E from the guy vomiting on the next cot over. Maybe you just had a nasty cold when they brought you in last week.
And this begs the question, what happens when 1 or 2% of a city have died: who will go to work? People will self-quarantine at home and the economy will crash. And what about the police, fire fighters, EMTs, and hospital crews? What about the crews down at your local power plant, or food distribution center? Think they will all become Mother Teresas, martyring alongside the lepers for the greater good? Think they will not stay home?
But even in the resulting economic crash, unfairness will be ferreted out. Is it fair that some people have prepared, and have several months-worth of food on hand? Is that fair, when the supermarkets were all looted in the general panic, and there have been no more food deliveries, and the EBT system is not functioning? Is it fair that some, who have prepared, will be able to simply ride out the Ebola pandemic to boot?
So the already latently violent among the starving will be very motivated to come out and play. Starving goblins, millions of them. What about the goblins who may think they have already contracted Ebola, and have a week until they die? Or if they believe they will certainly contract the deadly virus soon? And what if they firmly believe by then that Ebola was a CIA/Mossad plot to wipe out Africans and people of African ancestry?
Many American blacks are already angry. What happens to that anger when the epidemic strikes them? What happens when Ebola comes to Ferguson, USA, across most of the fifty states? Already brainwashed to a near fever-pitch of racial anger by professional agitators, it is my fear that after the plague hits they will then become super-beyond-belief pissed, and eager to share their case of Ebola with any white overlords and oppressors who come in range as their final act.
If you thought you were going to die in a week, most painfully and horribly, and you already had a giant hate-on for whitey, what might you do as some of your very final acts upon this earth? What will flash mobs of people that angry do? For just one example, home invasions in search of food and perceived retribution, will explode.
Talk about your perfect social storms? No, worse. Talk about your zombie apocalypse. I’ll say it again:
Alas, Brave New Babylon.
I know its a bit off topic but this stmt piqued my interest: ‘Many American blacks are already angry.’. Why? About what? They’ve been given so much but have succeeded so poorly. Are they angry at ‘us’ for giving or not *making* them succeed? Are they angry w/ themselves and taking it out on ‘us’? Sorry for being so think but I just don’t get it.
Or the economy. Think of all of the cancelled vacations.
Travis:
Blacks are already coughing in people’s faces and saying they’re spreading ebola at my daughter’s school.
They say they’re just joking, but sadly, I can picture them doing it for real because they don’t think beyond today in terms of cause and effect and consequences.
I’ve been telling her to avoid sick people and wash/use hand sanitizer as much as possible
Yikes! Imagine when Ebola arrives in your zip code.
I just went out and bought a trunkload of dry goods. I think there’s enough for three months now(been building up slowly since August)but don’t have enough canned goods and water if it all goes down.
I’m not a prepper by any means-a prepper would laugh their A off at my pitiful attempt but if we have water and a means to cook at least we won’t starve for a while.
Wish I would have started sooner a nd planned better and hd more storage space
At least you are now better prepared than 95% of your neighbors, and that will matter a lot.
Just don’t tell them.
They (many American blacks) have been indoctrinated for several generations and continuously told that they are victims of "the man." Republicans (white males) want to deny them the right to vote, welfare, respect (whether deserved or not) free stuff (in general), etc, etc.
They are not happy, and they just want everyone in America to be as unhappy as they are.
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