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Pandemic alert

04.05.2006
The risk of an influenza pandemic, avian or not, is likely increasing. So far, public health organizations, like the UN's World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have successfully warned large populations of the risk, which has mitigated the impact of these often deadly viruses. However, many officials believe it is only a matter of time before a virus spreads out of control. Should the current avian flu virus mutate so that it could spread from human to human, the WHO's worst-case scenario is that it would take only 21 days for the pandemic to blanket the globe. Investors should formulate an investment and trading strategy before the disease hits.

While a pandemic is bad for business, expect staffing, home networking, Internet access and online shopping to benefit from a pandemic. Conversely, with a sharp diminution of business, major enterprise purchases are likely to be put on hold. This would hurt servers, storage, large applications and middleware. We expect staff augmentation and project management companies to benefit, but this forecast relies on these companies to offset lost time by reassigning healthy staffers to the highest bidders.

In the event of a pandemic, we expect a large proportion of the workforce to remain at home and telecommute. This expectation calls for better-equipped home offices, security and virtual private networks (VPNs). With so many people staying at home, we expect that recreational Internet use and shopping would increase. If the pandemic became severe, staffing companies would benefit from higher prices as qualified labor became scarce.

Demand hit

Our PC forecast team expects that pandemics would dampen final demand. Some vendors--most likely the ones with online or telephone ordering--could benefit. For example, Dell sales increased in Asia during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus outbreak, because people were quarantined or stayed home.

With millions of employees working from home during a pandemic, an unprecedented level of voice and data traffic volumes will be placed on "consumer" telephone and cable networks for a sustained period of time. However, we have all recently witnessed how conventional wireline and wireless telephony systems fail to operate properly (or at all) during times of major communications demand precipitated by natural or man-made disasters. Yet, despite likely communications disruptions, the legal and fiduciary obligations of corporate officers and board members during a pandemic will not be suspended. Additionally, shareholders will bring lawsuits against executives and boards that fail to take all reasonable steps to ensure business continuity, given the amount of warning received prior to the pandemic.