Bangkok Post: The world windows to Thailand

ECO CAF?

I'm in Washington DC now amid the news about H1N1 influenza. The flu and the ramifications for global confidence have come at an inconvenient time for the already weakened world financial market.

When I first arrived in the US two weeks ago, there were 141 laboratory-confirmed human cases of H1N1 flu infection and one death. As I look again today, the number has climbed to 3,009 cases, including three deaths.

The map of flu infections in the US is now coloured almost all red, showing states where H1N1 has been confirmed. I'm not sure whether this rapid increase in confirmed cases has to do with the efficient distribution of diagnostic test kits to detect the virus.

So far, 30 countries have officially reported 5,728 cases of H1N1 flu infection and 61 deaths, 56 of them in Mexico. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a Phase 5 alert _ the last step before a pandemic Phase 6.

Phase 5 means the virus has proved capable of sustained human-to-human transmission with outbreaks in at least two countries.

This certainly looks quite worrying and we can see how much attention H1N1 has attracted around the world. For example, Intrade, a website that lets people bet on global events, is allowing traders to buy contracts based on how many people in the US will have H1N1 flu in the next few months.

Statistics show there is a 94% chance that the number of H1N1 cases in the US will top 5,000 by the end of June.

Given the global spread of the virus and the WHO announcement, it is understandable why there has been media hysteria over H1N1 _ the word ''pandemic'' was used in the newspapers as soon as the first death in the US was reported.

Although I am very concerned about this virus, and I am taking great care of my health, I am still not sure what is pandemic about it. In Washington, where seven cases of H1N1 have been detected, life moves on as usual _ people are not panicking.

In fact, there are reasons to remain calm. H1N1 seems to be responding to drugs. And although the flu caught us by surprise, we don't feel that the medical community was totally unprepared for the outbreak. On the contrary, there appear to be well co-ordinated efforts to contain and detect H1N1 across countries.

I couldn't help comparing H1N1 with the financial flu that is spreading around the world right now.

The financial flu, otherwise known as the financial crisis, is also affecting millions of lives. But the communication and the way financial experts are handling the crisis quite differently from the way that medical experts have handled the flu.

For a start, the H1N1 outbreak certainly got people's attention faster than the global financial crisis. Medical experts sent alerts all over the world almost immediately after H1N1 was identified found to have spread in Mexico. In contrast, many financial experts seemed to downplay the first signs of the financial crisis. Reports of the financial contagion remained quite mild for more than a year, at which point the crisis turned out to be much more severe than previously thought.

To medical experts, an alert is equivalent to a precautionary measure. It means that we are exposed to the new virus and that we need to be careful. For financial experts, a crisis warning means encouraging panic and telling people to prepare for the worst, which will only make things worse.

The medical community seems to have learned some lessons from the Sars and bird flu outbreaks. Doctors now clearly know much more about preventing deaths from new viruses than they did a decade ago.

Over the same period, progress made by economists in preventing economic meltdowns is a lot less.

In terms of public communication, there are many integrated websites on H1N1. But after two years of global financial crisis, it is hard to find an integrated source for updates on responses to the downturn.

Perhaps it's not too late for financial experts to learn from the medical experts' response to H1N1.

There is a specific need for a playbook on how to respond to the next financial crisis, as well as developing ready measures to prevent the financial deaths from infected firms spreading throughout the global financial system.

After all, if a real-life threat such as the H1N1 crisis can be contained and effectively dealt with, there is no reason to believe that the financial panic cannot be brought under the control of the governments and central banks.

Dr Tientip Subhanij holds a PhD in economics from the University of Cambridge, and currently has a career in banking as well as academia. She can be reached at tien201@yahoo.com