As a species, our best chance of surviving the threat posed by pathogens will come from working collaboratively. The great improvement in health that high-income countries experienced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was not a result of better medicine—as William McNeill claimed—or even economic growth per se. It was, rather, the consequence of political decisions to make massive investments in drinking water, sanitation, housing and poverty reduction. Just as cholera and other waterborne diseases forced cities to undertake vast infrastructure projects, Covid-19 should encourage us to
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