Outbreak of What in Boston?

Here’s a story that I’ll follow. It’s about an outbreak of Pertussis in Boston, only it turns out it really wasn’t Pertussis, nobody knows what it is. I had postulated that a free press is a key element to bringing public resources to bear on health issues, and to the ultimate control of epidemics, so this outbreak seems like something relevant to study. The prevention of epidemics and other public health emergencies can’t be done through market action alone, for many reasons, cheifly that a functioning healthcare infrastructure is enormously expensive and needs to be built long before a disease outbreak, not during it. An excellent example is the way London managed to get its cholera outbreaks under control, discussed in my post about Steven Johnson’s excellent book the Ghost Map. Also, just a few sick poor people can spread disease to those who can afford medicine, so it’s a classic case which calls for collective action.