Rating agency analysts continue to try to forecast what the dreaded H5N1 avian influenza might do to the U.S. insurance industry.
Like analysts at competing rating agencies, analysts in the New York office of Fitch Ratings emphasize the enormous difficulty of gauging the effects of the bird flu.
So far, the analysts write, there is no evidence that the virus has mutated enough to enable human-to-human transmission.
If the virus cannot spread easily from human to human, the global economic impact will be limited, the analysts write.
But the subject is "something that needs to be addressed," says Lauren Kalinowski, a Fitch associate director.