Do you think pandemics like HIV AIDS and malaria are hurting the economy? how?

Question

Not in the sense of the money being put towards relief efforts though. Do you think that if we just let HIV/AIDS be (globally) that it would hurt the economy?

Answer 1

Malaria, HIV and AIDS must be prevented to cause an epidemic because mankind can be extinguished from this earth.

Answer 2

Absolutely,

1. It is a drain on the healthcare systems of other countries, which can barely afford these services when times are good, put simply Africa could be a whole lot more prosperous without hurting anyone's economy. A prosperous set of African nations obviously needs less debt relief and can become a viable set of trade partners both to us and towards each other.

2. Having overwhelmed the healthcare systems of these other countries it opens us up for another epidemic H5N1 or some virulent form of Ebola or Marbug to run rampant and simply increases the success of such an organism to cause such a catastrophic pandemic.

3. The immediate effects in the US were fairly dramatic, in that largely the homosexual community was affected, this disproportionately hit "free thinking", "bohemian" types, which also tend to be significantly / disproportionately creative. So we have and will continue to loose the economic benefits of the creativity from that community.

4. Lethality - the HIV virus is easily transmitted through blood or most other bodily fluids however, because HIV is a fairly unstable virus , left unchecked, this WILL eventually lead to a variant that is either airborne or able to successfully survive aerosolization (through sneezing or spitting), then HIV becomes a serious problem for everyone.

5. Longer term, failure to either acknowledge or effectively deal and contain this and other public health problems through EDUCATION and good hygiene / domestic housekeeping or sexual practices, have catastrophic effects on population which in turn causes catastrophic effects on the economy of whatever country fails to implement or acknowledge contraceptive or other such good practices and policies.

For instance in Angola when the president was asked about his 3% population growth, he said - "It's not a problem, the problem will be orphanages and depopulation, since 8% of the population (at the time) had HIV" most of sub-Saharan Africa has HIV infection rates approaching 1 in 4 not one in 50 or 1 in 45 as is common in the US.

In Thailand and other communities the ratio is moveing from 1 in 4 to approaching 50% (1/2) of some populations (such as sex workers) have HIV / AIDS. which spreads largely unchecked through the serviced community as well as the armed forces of their country.

These countries passed the "critical mass" point, and now the general populations are being decimated and the economies suffer negative GDP as a result of religious conviction against contraceptive measures and/or failure to acknowledge the problem as potentially as devistating.

Similarly , certain communities HIV is much more prevalent (gays and drug users) however, it is increasingly being found among the heterosexual community and may in fact reach a critical mass point in another segment of the population (college students and sexually non-selective 20 somethings), this would be largely catastrophic to the US economy.