Birdflu (May, 2006)

Management > Crisis Management > Lectures > Independent Research > Staples > Scott et al. > Nohria > Nohria con'd > Bennis > Fischhoff > Brilliant > Dobson and Golden

Dobson and Golden - All Eyes on China

Unlike seasonal flu, which greatly affects those with weaker immune systems, avian flu causes immune system hyperactivity, meaning that the strongest of the workforce will be affected, which will, in turn greatly damage the world's businesses.

In China this will be particularly harmful. Its 1979 one-child-per-family policy has resulted in a decline in the rural labour force and combined with 90% of China's exports being manufactured, a pandemic of bird flu will cripple the economy. This in turn will affect the importing nations, such as the US.

While killing 50 million people, the plague of 1918-1919 occurred at a time when events diffused more slowly in some parts of the world. Today we live in a highly interrelated world and that China is so integrated into the global economy that if the pandemic starts there, the global impact will be immediate.