What is the swine flu ‘The swine influenza (swine flu) is a type of influenza that usually affects pigs. Sometimes people get sick of swine influenza. Before this recent outbreak of swine influenza, the majority of people who became sick with the virus usually had close contact with pigs. There are occasions when a person with a swine influenza can be transmitted to someone else. This transmuted into a human virus and it is a new virus that was unknown and for which there are still no vaccine. Influenza is a disease that leads to high costs for individuals and nations due to lost productivity and medical treatment associated with the disease and indirect costs of preventive measures.
The economic impact of the pandemics of the past have not been studied intensively, to the point that some authors have suggested that the Spanish influenza was a rather long term positive effect on economic growth per capita, despite the large reduction in the working population and the effects of repression in the short term.
Other studies have attempted to predict the costs associated with pandemics as serious as the Spanish flu of 1918, the impact on the countries where 30 of workers getting sick and 2.5 of them die. It is estimated that a morbidity rate of 30 for an illness that lasts 3 weeks to reduce the GNP by 5 . The additional costs arising from medical treatment of 18 – 45 million people a summary of 700 billion dollars.
Essential Psychopathology and Its Treatment by Jerrold S. Maxmen and Nicholas G. Ward (Hardcover – Jan 1995)