I concur with your take and look forward to reading the book you suggested. I, too, am a perpetual optimist, though sometimes that attitude has exacted harsh punishment by reality. Your point about communication of communicable diseases is well-made and well-taken, but let us step back for a moment.
Re the A380 "flustravaganza", what if only one of ill passengers, or worse, one who had been infected but upon deboarding was asymptomatic, was missed by the CDC screening process. What if he/she was a health professional working in a hospital? What if the disease was not influenza, but instead an hemorrhagic dyscrazia? I am sure that you are familiar with iatrogenesis and nosocomial infection. Even now, as we are comparatively more healthy and availed of superb communications networks, a patient (in U.S. hospitals) has a
30% chance of contracting a localized infection, often the difficult-to-treat MRSA. My wife, who suffers from Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis, was admitted to a well-known facility here in Cincinnati in September of 2015. It turned out that her symptomatology was revelatory of an L4-L5 disc herniation; we were delighted! The bad news was the urinary tract infection contracted
in the hospital took several weeks of high dose antibiotics to cure. 200 mbps internet speed did little to relieve her suffering...
As my wonderful Father used to say:"Life is very hard, but it's not so bad when one considers the alternatives!"
Now about that beer!
- Ed
EBOLA ZAIRE [discovered 1976 (The shepherd's crook from Hell)]