Debora MacKenzie > Quotes > Quote > The Bibliophile Doctor liked it

“All this reminds me of a tale told by the author Douglas Adams in one of his Hitchhiker’s Guide books, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. The planet Golgafrincham had too many people. So it contrived to keep the top professionals and the low-level practical workers, but rocketed all the middle-level “useless” people into space: security guards, for example, and telephone sanitizers. The remaining population subsequently lived happily—until they all died from a virulent disease contracted from an unsanitized telephone.”
― Debora MacKenzie, Stopping the Next Pandemic: How Covid-19 Can Help Us Save Humanity