'Economic impact of influenza'

1. • If the 2002 Asian flu pandemic had reached, the losses would have added $ 3 trillion

Today, the economic consequences of the new flu is incalculable. To begin to estimate necessary to distinguish between direct and indirect. There will also be taken into account that occurs in the midst of a global recession. First look at the consequences in Mexico, where, undoubtedly, will be relatively higher than in other countries. But the costs of the crisis there must be added those arising in other - in the United States, for example, in Spain, of course - to take an idea, which is necessarily approximate initial cost in this globalized world for the flu.

Among the consequences we can direct the temporary stoppage or slowdown of economic activity in Mexico, if everyone stays at home until May 5, as requested by President Felipe Calderón. Suppose you make the case for a week and were allowed to produce in Mexico all the economic value computable in GDP. Seven days without producing anything - clearly an exaggeration of course - it would mean a reduction in Mexico national product of $ 27,100 million, almost 2% of its GDP. Although this estimate may be somewhat exaggerated, we suggest that the magnitude of losses caused by the paralysis of economic activity could be really impressive.
This loss of value produced in the economy should be added the direct costs of preventive and curative, that Government estimates put between 700 and 1,000 million dollars. This includes medical laboratory diagnostics, medicines, doctors and assistants, and all police and military mobilization of necessary in a territory so vast. Represent a substantial increase in public spending on health and public order. The stoppage of production would therefore be the main cost to the Mexican economy.
In second place came the paralysis of tourist activities. It is unreasonable to think that the incidence of swine flu affects the export of manufactured goods more than it did the crisis. But tourism will be a special victim. Thousands of restaurants and bars have been closed across the country. The tourists have begun returning to their countries without end your holiday, and left hotels in the Riviera Maya practically empty. International flights bound for Mexico with almost no passengers arrive and cancellations are on the agenda.
The whole of the tourism industry in Mexico accounts for 6% of GDP. Its collapse could generate a recession as large as that caused by the Tequila effect in 1995, when Mexican GDP declined by 6.5%. An analysis of the current account balance of Mexico in 2008 gives us an idea of the economic consequences that can have a new swine flu. Revenues from tourist entry was 12.852 million dollars in 2007 and 13,289 in 2008. Remittances from emigrants, 25,589 million in 2008. Both items were falling because of recession in rich countries. Together accounted for 12% of the income of the current account. The reduction in revenue from abroad by the recession and the flu could double the negative balance of current account balance, which at the end of 2008 was 16,000 million.
All this could lead to a devaluation of the peso and a reduction in reserves, which would require spending to contain the fall of parity with the dollar. The U.S. currency was traded on April 30 at 13.70 pesos, and the tendency was to expensive. Before the impact of the new flu, foreign currency reserves of the Bank of Mexico had fallen from 85,000 million in December 2008 to 77,500. It can be assumed that at the end of April 2500 have fallen by about 3,000 million dollars or more. It is still early to assess the extent of the outbreak of the virus will exacerbate the recession that Mexico, like all other countries in the world, was suffering.

WHEN triggered the Asian flu (SARS) in 2002, the World Bank made estimates of the costs they would if they become a deadly pandemic causing millions of deaths. The agency estimated the economic damage that could result in such circumstances would amount to 3 trillion dollars. The SARS, in fact only killed some 800 people around the world. It is not fear that the current flu can cause such damage, unless the virus mutation actually suffer an evil from which there is no evidence.
But the damage of the kind experienced in Mexico on tourism and the current account could be extended to other countries where many cases are given new flu. Proposals are already being heard absurd to limit the trips not only to Mexico, where the flu has had greater impact, but to any country with a much lower incidence of the disease. The alert should not mutate into hysteria, or the flu to become a new pretext for economic protectionism and other nationalist dark designs.