International Law

Swine Talk is So 2003

By Stan

The swine flu panic is getting annoying. Sure, if this turns out to be a huge deal, I’m going to look pretty stupid.

On the other hand, I remember 2003, when an admittedly nasty bug, SARS, made everyone crazy without even killing that many otherwise healthy individuals. I still recall the businesses that shut down, all the people that ran out to buy cars so they wouldn’t have to ride the bus or train with the unwashed public, people pushing buttons on elevators with ballpoint pens so they wouldn’t have to touch anything with their fingers, etc. It was a bit over the top.

Here we go again. Yesterday, traders dumped their pig stocks, sending the Shanghai Exchange down (well, airlines and others took hits as well).

And now we have to deal with the same old “globalization” commentary regarding the international pandemic. Here’s one from David Brooks of the NYT, with the criminal headline, “Globalism Goes Viral.” For pity’s sake, please stop the headline atrocities.

We face a series of decentralized, transnational threats: jihadi terrorism, a global financial crisis, global warming, energy scarcity, nuclear proliferation and, as we?re reminded today, possible health pandemics like swine flu.

These decentralized threats grow out of the widening spread and quickening pace of globalization and are magnified by it. Instant global communication and rapid international travel can sometimes lead to universal, systemic shocks. A bank meltdown or a virus will not stay isolated. They have the potential to hit nearly everywhere at once. They can wreck the key nodes of complex international systems.

Shit, did he just dust off a column from six years ago and change the date? Perhaps he is rifling through Tom Friedman’s garbage for his castoffs?

This stuff is hardly new. In addition to SARS on the “international quickie pandemic” side of things, we have the Asian Financial Crisis of the late ’90s to talk about in the finance area.

Looks to me like someone needed to make a deadline and had nothing else to talk about.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Full post as published by China Hearsay on April 28, 2009 (boomark / email).