My favorite optimist..................

…........................…….takes a turn toward pessimism:

It is very easy, in other words, to bet on the tendency of journalists and their readers to engage in a competitive auction of unjustified alarm. “The whole aim of practical politics,” said H.L. Mencken, “is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” And no, the fact that the millennium bug was a damp squib was not because we were well prepared; some countries and industries did nothing and were still fine.

So why don’t I think this hobgoblin is imaginary? First, because lethal plagues have a long track record. From the plague of Justinian to the Black Death to the Spanish flu of 1918 to the HIV epidemic, new diseases have proved they can burn through the human population with frightening efficiency. It’s true we have got better at eradicating infectious diseases through vaccinations, pills and public health, but most viruses are still very hard to cure and some are very easy to catch.