Perma-Bear economist Stephen Roach from Morgan Stanley, is predicting a Global recession this year, blaming SARS as an important part of it. Well, somehow I just can’t see yet SARS being such an important factor given this graph using data from the World Health Organization (WHO):
it seems to me that the number of cases continues to grow linearly, the discontinuos jump being an artifact of the Chinese reporting a number of earlier cases at the end of March. Note the slope appear to be both the same as well as linear below and above the discontinuos jump. Typically epidemics spread exponentially in their initial stages, so unless Mr. Roach knows something I don’t, I just don’t buy it. (I think (hope?) this graph will update automatically as Paul Kedrosky, its author, updates it)
The Devil's Excrement 
