Avian Flu

I have recently been asked to provide some background to the impact that Avian Flu would have in the UK. The premise is "What would the economic effects of an Avian Flu outbreak be?" Where do you begin on something like that?

Well, as a tourism economist I am starting by considering what the tourism effects would be, but we have to constrain it somehow and say lets have a scenario which is similar to the outbreak of foot and mouth disease, where the disease is mainly confined to animals but tourists are put off coming to the UK and domestic tourism and leisure trips are constrained. Then let's say that the effects are similar to SARS in China - what economic effects would that have in the UK. This kind of thing would give an idea of the size of tourism impacts. There are alot of other things to consider - such as a larger impact which could kill 50,000 people in the UK, and then we get into a whole load of other economic effects as the government enacts emergency powers such as shutting down airports and ports, and restricting travel - see here for some brief outlines on this kind of thing.

A Canadian bank has published a report recently on the effects of Avian Flu, looking at what investors should, if anything, do now - and what the effects of a virus outbreak might be. This is an informative report. The part about the 1976 Swine Flu "Fiasco" on pp.12-13 makes for informative reading for anyone trying to make any kind of guess about the effects of these "possible" outbreaks, and the report is very cautious in trying to not sound alarmist - but at the same time talking about huge losses of life.

So I suppose the point of this being the first article on the tourism economic blog is to see if anyone has any comments on all of this, and in particular on whether this kind of research helps by making the world more aware of the impact of these risks or by being alarmist over them. Comments appreciated, more tourism economics to follow.