I wanted to title this article, “How to Make Money From the Bird Flu Pandemic,” but the more I think about it, the more I think trying to outguess events will just be too risky.

I’m sure that some people and companies will make a bird flu bet that pays off. They’ll buy stock in Roche or the companies that just got contracts from the United States government to make bird flu vaccines or in medical supplies or in some other way will make a killing.

But I think there’re too many unknown factors.

Will the virus ever become contagious to people? If so, will it retain its high mortality rate? Will it be quickly contained or will it spread?

Prices of goods and services rise and fall in relation to supply and demand. That’s basic economics.

The trouble is, depending on the answers to those questions and a host of other factors there will be numerous possibilities.

Commodities rose in price during the 1918 flu pandemic. Possibly scared Americans would rush to buy oranges in the mistaken belief they contain enough Vitamin C to protect them from bird flu. Or maybe they’ll be smarter.

Coffee is likely to be in short supply. We grow oranges in America but coffee must come from South America and Africa, two continents that’ll be hard hit by bird flu. Coffee futures would likely rise a lot. But if you buy and sell at the wrong time, you could still lose a lot of money.

Labor will be in short supply — but demand will also go down as all but essential businesses close down for the duration. Even if you’re a doctor or nurse, you may find yourself drafted for bird flu duty, not given a choice to bargain for more money.

Gold will no doubt spike up, as it always does during hard times — but at some point gold holders will want to sell some to raise money for food, and then the price of gold could collapse. Demand for gold jewelry would plummet during and after the pandemic.

I’ve seen people predict gasoline going up to $7 a gallon, but I think the pandemic could drop the price dramatically, because demand will drop.

People will not be driving to school or to work or to recreation or shopping malls. They’ll stay home as much as possible. Dead and sick drivers don’t buy gasoline. All trucks will stop running except those carrying food, water and medicines. All nonessential airplane travel will stop.

Currencies are commodities too, and intimately linked to politics. I have not see anyone else besides myself point out that a serious bird flu pandemic would redraw the political and perhaps the geographical map of the world.

If masses of people in a country are upset both by bird flu deaths and resulting economic shortages, they might well overturn their leadership. That means, the old money may become worthless. That means you should stock up on gold now.

Although I expect law and order challenges to occur in the U.S., I think the U.S. government will outlive bird flu. Same with Japan and most countries in Western Europe — though the massive number of immigrants from Muslim countries may pose more of a security hazard than we can guess, making me wonder about countries whose stability I’d have been certain of twenty years ago, such as France and Germany.

But could Gloria Magcapal continue to keep a lid on her enemies in The Philippines? Could China continue to repress its entire countryside and avoid splitting into sections? Could India, which has an extremely large number of ethnic minorities? Could the House of Sahd continue to control the government of Saudi Arabia?

Not all those countries would have violent governmental changes, but some would.

So I think the U.S. dollar, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, euro, Swiss franc and yen will retain high value. I can’t say how they’ll move in relation to each other, but they’ll all likely retain a store of value.

Cash in strong currencies will be king in developed countries. Keep it safe — in government bonds.

Gold will be the winner in developing countries. And bank accounts in stable developed countries.

Oh, I just took it for granted that you understand that in the event of a serious pandemic stock markets around the world will scrape bottom.

It is important to understand the result of a bird flu pandemic so that if the time comes, people will be enlightened to the knowledge of its overall effects. Also a country will be able to recover faster and the affect on the economy will not be as severe.

So What Would The Result Be If A Bird Flu Pandemic Did Happen To Occur?

Well firstly the worst impact would be a catastrophic loss of life. If the disease was not controlled immediately, the death count could grow into the thousands. Another possibility is that the spread could become uncontrollable, meaning that it will have become too widespread to be stopped. Although this is an unlikely event, it is still a possibility and people should make measures to reduce the likelihood of this occurring. In fact it has occurred to an extent in the past. In 1918 pandemic struck that caused the death of over 50 million people worldwide. It is important to note however that in that day and age, medicine was nowhere near as sophisticated as it is today.

Another impact, although less important, is the need to destroy poultry. Previous bird flu pandemics have seen the destruction of millions of poultry and the bankrupsy of a great number of poultry distributors. The first order that a government gives is to destroy most if not all poultry in the country so that they can quickly start to control the pandemic. This can have a severe impact on a nations economy.

How Should We Prepare For A Bird Flu Pandemic?

The best way to prepare for a pandemic is to do some research and learn about its affects(which is what you are doing now!) Secondly you need to write down a plan and response strategy so that when the time comes, you have a system that will prepare you for such an event. This will include things such as going down and picking up the kids from school and bringing them home. Also you will want to take note of what poultry products you have eaten in the last week. It is unlikely that bird flu will affect every chicken distributor in the country, but it’s better to be on the safe side.

Probably the most important rule that everyone should take note of is to not panic when a bird flu pandemic strikes. Panic only causes confusion, which then leads to chaos, which then leads to a catastrophe. If you have a plan with a series of steps that must be followed in the event of a pandemic then you have nothing to worry about.

I believe that a bird flu pandemic is quite possible and that people should prepare for it.

I devote a lot of time to thinking and writing about how to protect yourself and your family from bird flu.

I believe that my motivation — and the motivation of others sounding the alarm and the many people around the world who are working to prepare for a contagious form of bird flu is positive. We want to make sure that a bird flu pandemic kills as few people as possible.

However, people are people and few of us are 100% saints.

Therefore, although it dismays me, it doesn’t surprise me that some people display a less pleasant side of human nature.

None of us are immune. I’ll admit that I have a list of people whom I’d like to die from bird flu. I mean, I don’t really want anybody to die, but if SOMEBODY has to — let it be them. A few on my list are in my personal life.

Others I’d really like to see die from bird flu are all the enemies of freedom. That’s all terrorists and those supporting and encouraging them. Not to mention dictators who threaten world peace such as the head of North Korea. And although he’s not as dangerous, I’d be happy to see Fidel Castro go.

However, I realize that if a bird flu pandemic actually happens, the virus doesn’t care anything about the nature of its victims. H5N1 would just as soon infect an innocent baby as a terrorist planning to set off a nuclear bomb. And the children of Iran would be far more at risk than its fanatically dangerous president.

Yet I know that there’re many people who love to read post-apocolyptic science fiction because they love to fantasize about solving the problems of today by starting over. Some of them believe they’d be better off by living in a world where might made right. And I remember one feminist SF fan telling me that she enjoyed imagining that if the world had to stay over from scratch that women could make sure the patriarchy was eliminated.

I was not surprised to read in a bird flu forum recently that the poster believed that it was good that bird flu would eliminate a lot of people, because the world was overpopulated.

A professor nicknamed Dr. Doom recently acquired some notoriety by expressing much the same sentiment in a speech to some scientists. According to him, people are no better than bacteria. He actually said that he hoped a terrorist would spread Ebola to kill 90% of the human race. But “bird flu would work too.” The audience actually applauded him.

One problem here is that we are concerned for ourselves and our loved ones, and the other 6.5 billion people are meaningless to us. However, most everybody is loved and valued by their own friends and family. It’s easy to kill off 5 or 6 billion faceless numbers, but people who have faces, personalities and emotions — especially children — that’s a lot different.

It’s also easy to believe that you are one of the protected ones who will survive the bird flu pandemic. Yet Americans are no more virus-proof than Vietnamese children. If the Earth wants to get rid of people, why not you too?

Then there’re the religious crazies. When bird flu was first found in Israel, an extremist Jew said that was God’s punishment for removing the settlers from the Palestinian territories and a Palestinian Muslim cleric said it was God’s punishment of Israel for being Jewish.

Since bird flu has so far infected countries and people who are: Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, officially atheistic, unofficially Taoist and Christian — I don’t think the virus cares about religion.

So all I ask — and I know that when emotions, especially fear, run high this is difficult — is to recognize the more hateful emotions within you, and then remember that our real enemy is the H5N1 virus.

You see a lot of wild and crazy estimates for this. Yet, the truth is, there’s no simple answer. It depends on a lot of things — and the most important factors are still unknown.

First of all, I don’t put any stock in the simplistic estimates that are based on 1918. We’re living in a much different world. H5N1 is a different virus.

Some estimates are based on more sophisticated mathematical models. The only problem is, right now critical variables are still unknown.

First variable is known as the lethality rate. That is, what percentage of infected people will bird flu kill?

Right now, based on known victims, it’s consistently killing just over half. However, the numbers of patients are still quite small, so that may not be statistically accurate. Plus, many of those patients are receiving good medical care. It may kill a higher percentage of those who don’t make it to hospitals.

It’s also true that we probably don’t know the true number of infected people. Just a few days ago Indonesia announced that it just learned that a little girl who died there last year had bird flu, even though several of her family members were known to have died of it.

If a relatively advanced country isn’t getting around to testing an obviously suspect child patient until 8 months after her death — what’s happening in sub-Saharan Africa?

How many more victims are going undetected? That’s unknown. On the bright side, it’s possible that some or many victims are recovering without being tested so the actual lethality rate might be lower than we think.

If and when H5N1 mutates into a highly contagious form, its lethality rate could go lower. Until it actually happens, we just don’t know.

But it is frightening to compare H5N1 to the 1918 flu, because the 1918 flu had a lethality rate of 2.5% — so if contagious bird flu retains anything like its current apparent lethality rate, it could be much deadlier than 1918 flu. Which would make comparisons between them way over-optimistic.

To measure the spread of a disease, scientists use the contagion rate.

This is — how many other people on average does one infected person spread the flu to?

Partly this is based on the virus itself, so we just can’t know this until it does mutate. However, right now H5N1 is a tough virus — it can survive for hours outside a human body and in water. This means that you could be infected by an A/H5N1 virus left on a doorknob by someone who opened that door several hours before you.

Overall contagion rate must be affected by population density. Bird flu will infect more people in a crowded Calcutta slum than in rural Wyoming.

And here’s a great difference between now and 1918. The world’s population is over 6 times higher. But since some areas of the world are so densely crowded, it’s possible that chicken flu would spread through them very quickly and kill even more than 6 times as many people as in 1918.

Plus, in 1918 various areas of the world defended themselves by closing themselves off from the outside world. Some places can still do this, but most of the world is much less self-sufficient. Unless you’re on an island that supplies its own food and water, you can’t isolate yourself from other people.

And even if you can — there’s still the risk of contagion from animals. So your island better not be under a duck migration route. Because duck manure does contain the active virus.

Plus, the world’s population may be more susceptible to infection than in 1918. Everybody infected with HIV is at risk, for example.

Bird flu would likely travel around the world more quickly today because we have much more international travel. We go places by jet instead of steam ships.

There’s another advance in transportation — not usually mentioned — which will affect transmission of bird flu: the automobile. Only a very few people in 1918 had cars, and there was no system of highways.

Now cars and highways connect the entire developed world. And are common and widespread in the developing world.

Of course, riding alone in a car during a lethal flu pandemic is safer than riding in a bus, train or other mass transit vehicle with many other people. Yet if you’re the one infected, a car can help you spread the virus farther and faster than you could have in 1918.

There’s another risk of death the world’s population faces from A/H5N1, which is not being addressed.

That’s the risk of the consequences of the pandemic.

If the pandemic causes many deaths the world’s economy will be disrupted.

There’ll be shortages of food, water, medicine, energy and other necessities. This could last for a year or more, if agriculture is greatly affected.

In many places there’s likely to be problems with both law and order and civil unrest.

In a pandemic of any significant seriousness there will death caused by a large number of various groups seeking to take advantage of the situation: ordinary criminals, terrorists, organized crime, renegade groups of soldiers and police, ethnic/racial **** groups, political/religious extremists of all stripes — and just any old mob looking to loot and kill just because they can get away with it, or to scapegoat some other group for the pandemic.

In some cases there’s bound to be organized armed battles and wars between countries and between competing groups within countries.

My personal belief is that there’ll be great civil unrest but ultimately society as we know it will prevail — though the world’s map may change in many places.

With central governments weakened by deaths and lack of resources, many disaffected ethnic groups will seize the opportunity to become independent.

On the other hand, many ethnic majorities will seize the opportunity to blame ethnic minorities for the pandemic — and kill them in riots.

The severity of events will likely fall somewhere between the temporary default of law and order in New Orleans during the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the total anarchy of Stephen King’s novel THE STAND.

How can anybody predict the number of dead from these events?

lu could be the greatest threat to modern civilization and the world is poorly prepared for a bird flu pandemic. The rapid spread of the bird flu virus raises the question: what can we do to protect ourselves if a bird flu pandemic strikes?

A potential bird flu pandemic can’t be taken lightly.

By taking samples from lungs of exhumed victims researchers at the USA Centers For Disease Control confirmed the 1918 Spanish flu was also a bird flu. Alarming news because the Spanish flu pandemic was a global catastrophe infecting approximately one quarter of the United States and one fifth of the world.

From 20 million to 50 million people died from this 1918 Spanish “bird” flu and most of the victims were aged from 20 to 40 years . This pattern is unusual because influenza normally kills the sick, elderly and young children.

At the height of the Spanish bird flu funerals were limited to 15 minutes, there was a chronic shortage of coffins and gravediggers and stores were forbidden to hold sales.

It seems that a mutated bird flu like the 1918 Spanish “bird flu” is particularly dangerous because human populations haven’t had the chance to develop a resistance to a virus that is normally limited to birds.

Worse still, effects of a bird flu outbreak are not just limited to disease and death. The outbreak of SARS in Hong Kong demonstrated in stark terms that commerce can be shut down in an area suffering cases of a deadly infectious disease.

If a wide scale bird flu pandemic were to break out in the western world we could see cities gripped with fear as Hong Kong was for that short period with SARS in 2003. Empty shops, empty streets and commerce grinding to a halt.

Dr Michael Osterholm, epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota called a potential bird flu pandemic “The single greatest risk to our world today.”

David Nabaro from UN health predicted from 5 to 150 million people could die worldwide if the bird flu virus mutates to a human to human virus.

Britain’s chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson said it wasn’t a question of IF a virus pandemic like the bird flu would hit human populations but WHEN.

Sir Liam also pointed out a vaccine for a human to human bird flu virus can’t be produced until the virus mutates and a bird flu vaccine may not be effective even after one can be produced.

The Asian flu pandemic of 1957 demonstrated how difficult it is to vaccinate against a rapidly mutating widespread influenza virus. Despite prior warning and despite a vaccine being developed quite rapidly the 1957 Asian flu spread to the United States where it killed 70,000 people.

Health authorities have difficulty producing and administering vaccines quickly enough to fight a virus. Also the rapidly mutating nature of influenza viruses means many vaccines provide very limited protection.

Anti-viral drugs are a more recent development in the fight against respiratory viruses like the bird flu and governments in the western world have begun stockpiling the anti-viral drug tamiflu as part of a bird flu protection plan. But in a bird flu pandemic tamiflu may not be as effective as authorities would hope.

In an unsettling development for health authorities tamilflu resistant strains of the bird flu are appearing. Recently a vietnamese girl was diagnosed with a tamiflu resistant strain of bird flu and in China the bird flu strain H5N1 is showing around 70% resistance to adamatane drugs like tamiflu.

Other anti-viral drugs like Relenza may be more effective if a bird flu pandemic strikes but until the bird flu mutates to a human to human virus we can’t be certain which drug – if any – will provide a pharmaceutical first line of bird flu defense.

On the lighter side of bird flu prevention sales of sauerkraut in 54 Twin Cities stores in the USA spiked 840% after an inconclusive and tiny study by Korean researchers found the bacteria in fermented greens might speed the recovery of chickens infected with the bird flu.

People more interested in a little more serious bird flu protection than fermented cabbage might heed the one consistent recommendation from health authorities across the world to reduce your chance of catching the bird flu virus.

Over 90% of respiratory viruses like the bird flu enter your body through contact between the mucous membranes of your eyes and nose and your fingernails. They hitchhike their way into your body after being picked up on your hands.

In a World Health Organization news conference WHO Global Influenza Program leader Klaus Stohr said frequent hand washing was the best way to avoid a viral infection including the bird flu.

Every government health authority in the western world recommends hand washing as a basic precaution to prevent respiratory viruses like the bird flu, SARS, influenza and the common cold.

But washing your hands effectively is not quite as simple as it may seem on the surface. Technique is important as is the soap you use.

Antibacterial soaps are NOT recommended for regular hand washing even for health professionals.

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