Impact of a Hypothetical Infectious Disease Outbreak on US Exports and Export-Based Jobs

Bambery, Zoe; Cassell, Cynthia H.; Bunnell, Rebecca E.; Roy, Kakoli; Ahmed, Zara; Payne, Rebecca L.; Meltzer, Martin I.

For this illustration, we have not specifically defined the causative pathogen, as a number of potential candidates exist, such as avian influenza (eg, H5N1 or H7N9 strains), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), or Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). It can be rationally assumed that there is a risk that such pathogens can evolve and adapt to allow sustained human-to-human transmission in the 9 countries (Table 1) . Instead of focusing on the spread of the causative pathogen, we evaluated the spread of the economic impact that such an outbreak may generate, estimated in terms of reductions in GDP, and thus reductions in demand for US exports. Table 2 ) to illustrate how the spread of an infectious pathogen could potentially affect the US export economy. Scenario inputs were informed by the recent West Africa Ebola outbreak and associated economic modeling or other relevant evidence published by the World Bank (Table 2) . b The unknown variables in the hypothetical scenario that affect the likelihood of an outbreak, including a pandemic, occurring at any point in time include: (1) the rate at which new infections or diseases emerge, and (2) the chance that those same diseases spread and evolve into more serious outbreaks.