Of course, even if political leaders are corrupt and political institutions are rotten, people can still cooperate with each other. They can take matters into their own hands, launching their own cooperative efforts to contain pathogens. For example, when city leaders failed to alert New Yorkers to the spread of cholera in the nineteenth century, private physicians banded together and issued their own bulletins. Such actions make sense. And extreme events do tend to bring people closer together. Think of New Yorkers after the September 11 terror attacks or in the wake of recent hurricanes. But
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