Straight Up Swine Flu
May 2, 2009 by Lela Davidson
Filed under Finance
What would a full blown swine flu outbreak mean for the economy? Opinion ran wild this week.
The Wall Street Journal looked at a possible pandemic in light of the current economic circumstances.
The swine-flu outbreak has come at a particularly precarious time for the global economy, which could see signs of recovery wilt if a pandemic develops.
Some took advantage of the opportunity for swine flu satire:
As the map from Wikipedia clearly shows, the outbreak in America and Canada is in red, thus confirming that Republicans are responsible. While in Mexico the blame falls squarely on the blacks (thus, the Democrats) and in the rest of the world (indicated in yellow) we can see an obvious Chinese connection to the virus’ origins.
iStockAnalyst (and many, many others) focused on the early week swine flu infected stock market.
The Mexican outbreak of swine flu comes just as world policymakers began to see signs that the global economy might finally be stabilizing after being hammered by a withering recession for more than a year.
And what’s a virus without a serious conspiracy theory behind it?
There are some factors that suggest the swine flu killing people in Mexico may be a biological weapon, but obviously no such conclusion can be drawn at this time. The World Health Organization and the U.S. government have been quick to deny such claims.
The swine flu: just in time for a slow news week.
