Wild in the streets

Hmmm... Does anybody remember the movie from the sixties where the young people started locking up the old people and taking over? Pretty funny at the time, lots of LSD and rock music... I wonder when a pandemic happens if we'll see similar behavior toward the ill... or for that matter toward people that we don't want to get sick I can recall footage of quarantines back in the sixties and fifties, you don't see that today with all the vacinations If you have no idea how a disease is transmitted its pretty reasonable to lock people away who are infected, and then lock away the people who locked those people away and so on.

I would have to think that mass quarantines would be less likely today because of better understanding of epidemiological factors. I would guess though that in isolated areas you might see doctors, individual stores or restaurants suggesting that those who might be exposed or have the flu stay out or come at certain times.

So far we're just quarantining chickes, but hey, maybe stewardesses will be next when it jumps to people.:

Romania imposes bird flu quarantine
Wire Reports
BUCHAREST, Romania - Romanian authorities called for calm Saturday as they quarantined an eastern region where tests confirmed Europe's first appearance of a deadly strain of bird flu that has devastated flocks and killed dozens of people in Asia.

Poland's government banned the sale of live birds at open-air markets and ordered farmers to keep poultry in closed quarters beginning Monday. It also banned pigeon races. (lest we infect the little pigeon jockeys that ride them...)
On Friday, after the deadly H5N1 virus was confirmed in Turkey, on Europe's doorstep, European Union experts agreed that steps should be taken to limit contact between domestic fowl and wild birds.

Back to demographics and social effects. We can probably multiply out some effects by thinking about the individual case and multiplying it out, asking at what percent things change. Normally, if one part of the population stops doing something, another may rush in to fill the void due to promotions and so on, but when the population disappears other things happen.

Consider if 2% of the population dies, that will result in perhaps 2% of the homes, cars and property of those people passing to their heirs and perhaps going on the market, creating not a surplus of 2% of the houses, but instead temporarily adding say 6 million houses to the market, while removing 6 million people from the possible market to occupy them. Multiply this effect across various segments and you have the potential for a very very bad economic slump, slightly offset perhaps by the life insurance payouts to heirs and the boost to the government coffers from the inheritance taxes... oh wait, it'll be mostly the poor so maybe the economic effect will be very different. I'll have to think that direction through tomorrow.

Stay out of the coop...