Yeah, but if there is a sudden die off of a good size percent of the population, even say just 3-4%, if there isn't a housing bubble now, there certainly would be than. What would happen to all that suddenly unneeded housing? Probably also hit the farmers hard, drop food prices way down. Was surprised PG had warned they would miss by 1% because of all the tornadoes and recent weather was going to increase the price of snack food ingredients. The tornadoes couldn't have hit enough fields to even notice not that most has even be planted yet. But it does look like the wet weather is delaying planting season. Corn cam, http://www.IowaFarmer.com/corncam/corn.html is having to wait for their fields to dry out before they can plant, and are already about a week behind last year.
Also Paul Harvey said the universities with a large foriegn enrollement have told the parents from Asia, don't bother coming, you're not welcome. So even if SARS isn't here yet, it's effects are.