THE HIGH COST OF ILLNESS.

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 12-MAY-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

From the moment news of the sars epidemic broke, analysts have been busy trying to calculate its economic costs. The absence of tourists and shoppers in places like Hong Kong and Singapore means billions of dollars in lost sales. Beijing has closed its theatres and discos, and Shanghai and Shenzhen have shut down their stock exchanges. A recent Goldman Sachs report said that if sars remains a problem in East Asia it has "real potential to disrupt industrial production and foreign trade."If the disruption were to become bad enough, it could hobble the global economy, since everything we buy these days seems to be made in that part of the world.

Still, epidemics aren't what they used to be. No modern epidemic is likely to reshape social and economic systems in the manner of premodern plagues. The Black Death...

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