Another question: When the Asian flu erupted last summer, did IMF prescriptions exacerbate the illness?

FORBES: Fact and Comment

After Spanish flu in 1918 and Asian flu in 1957, there was another pandemic, Hong Kong flu (H3N2) in 1968.

BBC: The flu virus that nearly killed me

Enter the second link in the transmission of Asian flu: commodity prices.

ECONOMIST: Emerging-market measles

They say neither Asian flu after the first world war nor the Black Death in the Middle Ages did much economic damage either.

ECONOMIST: India wakes up to AIDS

Try this thought experiment: Suppose the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell to 5000 and stayed there, supine and sick with Asian flu, for several years.

FORBES: Digital rules

Second-hand Asian flu: Xilinx's and Altera's customers are primarily in the data processing, communications and networking industries--all of which are suffering some effects from the Asian meltdown.

FORBES: Not for war orphans

When war broke out in 1939, Freeborn temporarily gave up his fledgling career to train as a fighter pilot, only to almost lose his life to Asian flu and haemophilia.

BBC: Star Wars make-up artist Stuart Freeborn dies aged 98

Nevertheless, the last four pandemics - the Spanish Flu that began in 1918, the Asian Flu of 1957, the Hong Kong Flu of 1958 and the swine flu of 2009 - were all preceded by periods of La Nina conditions.

BBC: La Nina 'linked' to flu pandemics

Experts urged Chinese health authorities to keep testing healthy birds, saying the H7N9 virus can infect birds without causing disease, making it harder to detect than the H5N1 bird flu virus that is more familiar to Asian countries.

NPR: China Kills Market Birds As Flu Found In Pigeons

Since first emerging in 1997 in Hong Kong, the bird flu has spread across poultry flocks in nine East Asian countries.

FORBES: A Killer Virus Spreads