Economics, Politics, and Psychology: The Case of Avian Flu--
Posner There is concern about the possibility of a flu pandemic
that would be as or more lethal than the 1918-1919 Spanish flu
pandemic, which may have killed as many as 50 million people
worldwide; 500,000 died in the United States. A strain of avian
flu first detected in 1997 has infected some 150 million birds,
including chickens, ducks, and geese, mainly but not only in
eastern Asia. More than 100 human beings have been infected, of
whom about half have died. The victims were infected by contact
with diseased birds rather than by contact with infected humans.
As long as the only transmission is from birds to humans rather
than from humans to humans, there will be no human pandemic. But
the flu virus is notoriously mutable; if the current strain of
avian flu mutated into a form that made it transmissible from
one infected person to another, it might spread rapidly through
the human population. Stocks of vaccine for immunizing people
from the avian