Is the world over-reacting to the threat of a flu pandemic?

Introduction Actors of the debate "people" WHO Governments Individuals

How do we measure over-reacting: we react in such a way that will cause a strain or waste in resources 2 approaches: overreacting to the LIKELINESS of pandemic occurring and overacting to the SERIOUSNESS of a pandemic

Nature of influenza An influenza pandemic is an epidemic of an influenza virus that spreads on a worldwide scale and infects a large proportion of the human population Epidemic: Must be present in more than one continent and must be present in more than one country per continent Spreads easily from different mediums such as animals and injestion of affected animals Mortality rate is usually high, especially developing countries e.g. Spanish

Case: Over reacting and not over reacting to both approaches (4 cases) _________________________________________________________________________________ Over -reacting to the SERIOUSNESS - Government: taking measures which distort efficiency in resource allocation (slaughtering of 300,000 pigs when there has been no causes of swine flu in Egypt and the economic implications/deploying extra measures such as checkpoins likeairports) Not overreacting to the SERIOUSNESS -fear of the unknown (possibility of viral mutation)

Body
Over-reacting to the LIKELINESS of pandemic Not over-reacting to he LIKELINESS of Pandemic

Egypt slaughtering 300000 pigs