Reminder From a Five-Year-Old

While Mexico’s swine flu patient zero has recovered fully and is back engaged in what holds many five year olds’ attention – watching television – the process of the flu itself can provide a lesson in globalization. According to the author, international air travel was as much a cause, as a potential cure by transporting doctors and medicine, for the disease. Moreover, the media attention that surrounded the outbreak if sensational, as some detractors have proclaimed, also helped to raise concerns that Mexico wasn’t addressing the situation adequately. A similar situation occurred with the SARS epidemic when the international media uncovered the Chinese government’s attempt to conceal the outbreak. Moreover, responses to previous epidemics would not have been as swift or as successful without global cooperation of governments, international organizations, and multi-national corporations. As much as critics may find discontent with the process of globalization, the benefits and the solutions to those discontents are bound together with the damage. – YaleGlobal