Word: contagion
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...passengers struck by gastroenteritis this month on the cruise ship Aurora can attest, holidays sometimes go very wrong. Mediterranean ports refused to allow the ship entry for fear of contagion, and irate travelers have threatened to sue. But what rights would you have in a similar fix? Not many. Airlines and cruise operators owe their passengers a "duty of care" not to expose them to unreasonable risk. If the company has breached this (e.g. with inadequate hygiene), then you may have cause for compensation. But proving that can be difficult - the spread of a contagious virus in an enclosed setting...
...rescue, but its programs did little to fix the problem. In fact, critics such as myself argued that IMF policies - particularly its insistence on premature "liberalization," or forcing recipient nations to open up their financial markets to often volatile short-term capital flows - had helped bring on the contagion, and that its "medicine" had made the patients far sicker. Eventually, even the IMF agreed that it had imposed contractionary fiscal policies, and that premature capital market liberalization might expose countries to risks. Three years later protesters stormed the annual International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting in Prague and, with a couple...
...then came SARS. Unlike previous crises, which remained relatively focused in their impact, the contagion tarred every destination in East Asia with the same brush. In the late 1990s, Thailand and Hong Kong benefited from Indonesia's turmoil as travelers went to those two places in search of a safe haven. But with SARS, everybody lost. Although Thailand and Indonesia were virtually untouched by the virus, they suffered almost equally with the worst-hit destinations...
...secure their victory Hu and Wen will have to bring SARS under control quickly, and it's not clear that is possible. In Beijing alone, the caseload has been rising by an average of 100 patients a day, and there is no sign that the contagion has been contained. To cope with the ballooning number of victims, the central government is desperately beefing up the country's inadequate health-care infrastructure. Last week, construction of a 1,000-bed SARS treatment facility on the outskirts of the capital was completed in an astonishing six days. Yet the WHO is worried...
...Contagion...