As officials in China and around the world marshal their resources to contain the human cost of the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak, many businesses are just beginning to assess the economic effects. It is early days, but China’s experience with epidemics over the past 20 years can provide a sense of what this latest outbreak may mean for China’s economy. Also, history provides some signposts that can help companies navigate through the crisis and emerge stronger and better positioned.Among those past epidemics—avian flu, swine flu and SARS—only the 2002–2003 SARS outbreak seems truly comparable. So far, the novel coronavirus appears to be less deadly to those it infects, with a mortality rate of 2%–3% vs. SARS’ rate of 6.6%. But it is much more contagious—coronavirus already has eight times the number of cases reported during the entire SARS epidemic, and the
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