Epidemics are sparked by social conditions as much as they are by introductions. Whether it’s deforestation and civil war in West Africa, the lack of sanitation and modern infrastructure in Haiti, or the crowding and filth of nineteenth-century New York City, without the right social conditions, epidemics of cholera and Ebola would have never occurred. Should health-care workers in West Africa, UN soldiers in Haiti, or Irish immigrants in nineteenth-century New York be held responsible for those, too?
