This just in: Evil Death Flu Could Cost Us Money!

zomg! According to CNN, a severe flu pandemic could cause a 5.5% drop in US GDP, costing our economy roughly $683 billion! Who knew that the deaths of over 2 million people (and the sickening of another 90 million) could wreak so much havok! Oh, the humanity!! And that's not even including the losses in that elusive "core sphere" of economic activity!

So yeah... it seems profoundly stoopid to point out the economic costs of such a pandemic... as if millions of deaths would slide off the economy like water off a duck's back. Still, I guess it's good to quantify it. It gives us an opportunity cost against which to compare the cost of developing a robust vaccination infrastructure. So I suppose it's not all bad... just very silly, on the face of it.