2016-01-28

Socionomics Alert: Zika Panic

Brazil has been suffering a bout of negative social mood for several years and it has expressed itself in the economy, politics and now health.

Socionomics Institute: Social Mood, Epidemics — and the Threat to 2016 Olympics
One of the most effective epidemics charts I’ve ever presented shows four London Cholera epidemics which followed sharp declines in the FTSE All-Share Index in the mid-1800s (Fig. 1).

The lesson from the chart is simple and clear: hygiene is largely maintenance, and maintenance gets neglected in bear markets.

Today, Brazil is sadly following that classic path: negative mood is fostering unsanitary conditions that produce health threats.

Figure 2 shows Brazil’s social mood as reflected by its benchmark Bovespa Index, which topped in 2008, rallied to a lower high and has steadily trended lower since.

Socionomic theory proposes that long periods of negative mood produce a number of conditions that make society increasingly susceptible to infectious disease.

It would be hard to find a better article that links disease with negative mood than “Spreading Virus Adds to Brazil’s Woes,” in the December 22 issue of The Wall Street Journal. The article describes the Zika virus, a mosquito-borne pathogen that has been around since the 1940s and is now spreading rapidly in Brazil. It has been linked to “an explosion of cases of microcephaly, an extremely rare condition in which babies are born with shrunken skulls because their brains aren’t growing properly.”
A depressed individual doesn't take care of their health, appearance, etc. Societies are similar. Additionally, depression is generally linked with being more susceptible to disease. Laughter may not literally be the best medicine, but it is good medicine.

The fear over Zika is also a sign of negative mood around the globe. There has been a pandemic fear once every three years or so since mood peaked in 2000. SARS, bird flu, swine flu, ebola, now Zika.

BBC: Zika virus could become 'explosive pandemic'

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