Pandemics reap huge toll

Swine flu, which has claimed 429 lives around the world, will undoubtedly damage the fragile global economy. Some economists have suggested a pandemic could cost more than US$3 trillion ($4.7 trillion). During past pandemics:

BLACK DEATH

Probably the most destructive pandemic in history, killing an estimated 75 million to 200 million people worldwide in the 14th century.

"It altered the course of European history and, in the end, world history," says Professor Tony Barnett at the London School of Economics. "Some have argued that it established what we call modern capitalism."

It forced people to change the way they worked. Before the plague, the main source of income in East Anglia, for example, was growing crops. But the Black Death claimed so many lives that survivors turned to rearing sheep for wool as that required less manpower. This lack of manpower also brought new equipment such as big fishing nets. Previously, men used spears to catch fish. Many believe that it ended feudalism, the system of service in return for a grant of land, which burdened the peasant with many obligations to his lord. Survivors became more particular about where they worked.

SPANISH FLU

The 1918 pandemic is estimated to have caused at least 50 million deaths. It lasted until 1920, spreading as far as the Arctic and Pacific Islands, and is estimated to have affected up to a billion people

The flu was most deadly for people aged between 20 and 40, which meant that it killed a large proportion of the world's workforce.

The flu affected 28 per cent of Americans and claimed an estimated 675,000 lives. The International Monetary Fund said that in the United States industrial production and wider business activity dipped at the height of the pandemic in October 1918. However, a recent study by the Canadian Department of Finance, showed these declines point to an annual loss in output of 0.4 per cent.

SARS

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), which struck in 2003, is believed to have killed 774 people in mainland China and Hong Kong. A study for the Asian Development Bank estimated the cost of lost economic activity in Asia at between US$18 billion and US$60 billion, the equivalent of between 0.6 per cent and 2 per cent of the GDP of the region.

Julian Jessop, chief international economist at consultants Capital Economics, says the economic costs of Sars were much less than feared initially and activity soon recovered. Consumer confidence in China collapsed briefly.

The outbreak is estimated to have cost about US$2 million per case identified (around 8500), and to have had a full economic cost to East Asian economies of about US$32 billion in total.

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