Between March and May of 2003, tourist arrivals in Asia dropped between 30 and 80%, with about half of all flights being canceled depending on the country and region. As word of the mystery illness spread, the Asian Equity Market Indices declined by 15% over a 4-week period. Ultimately, the World Bank reported a ∼2% loss of East Asian GDP in the second quarter of 2003 during the SARS outbreak. The Asian Development Bank placed the global economic loss at 59 billion USD with the bulk of these losses located from mainland China (17.9 billion) and Hong Kong (12 billion) while Canada suffered losses of more than 1 billion. Most financial losses were associated with disruptions of trade, travel, investment, interruption of product supply chains and behavior changes in consumers, rather than from medical costs or the loss of human life. For comparison sake, the bovine spongiform encephalopathy epidemic in the UK, the sporadic avian influenza virus cases, and the UK foot and mouth disease epidemic caused 10-13, 15-20 and 25-30 billion in economic losses, respectively.