And then I think of infectious diseases - health - public health, prions, flu.
H5N1 Bird Flu is just one of many dangerous and untreatable diseases poised to go pandemic. Other untreatable serious diseases already have gone global. For example, Drug-resistant TB could infect 2 million by 2015.
Of course, medicos and activists have been ranting about drug-resistant TB for some time now, and authorities have been considering all kinds of "solutions" - like this one, put on the table in 2007: Quarantine Until Death: The Pandemic Policy Now on Trial in the Court of Public Opinion.
Like Bird Flu, TB is a zoonosis - a disease that jumps back and forth between animals and people. Zoonoses are the greatest disease threat we face globally - and new zoonoses seem to appear every other week.
Sadly, our system forces medical specialties to compete with one another - doctors and researchers have to "pick" a disease to focus on - and few have the resources to look at the big global picture. So the focus is on "treatments" and "cures" - NOT prevention.
Big Pharma, vaccines and magic pills aside, our best defence is the same as it always has been - hygiene. Clean water and air, uncontaminated food, good nutrition - hand washing - and personal responsibility:
Don't go to work sick - especially if you handle food!
Unfortunately, the only low-level employees who can afford to miss work when they're sick have union contracts. Your friendly servers and the cooks who prepare your food aren't covered. Many have children, mortgage payments, car payments and lots of other bills. So they go to work sick - because they have to.
It doesn't look like that essential bit of prevention is about to happen. Unions are getting busted all over the place - never mind Wisconsin:
Union-Busting: Six Fired After Demanding Sick Days for Fast-Food Workers
Get ready. There are NO magic pills, and prevention is not covered.
Without unions, or some kind of public coverage, prevention will never be possible. 'Cuz people have to work. Without prevention we're looking at epidemics and pandemics, non-stop - and truly unthinkable solutions like eugenics policies or quarantine 'til death. ...In that light, unions don't look so bad to me.
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