My last post for December 31, 2009 was The first flu post of 2010. It seems like a long time ago. Swine flu had raged for most of the year, H5N1 seemed to have vanished, and I wasn't yet paying much attention to other diseases.
I certainly didn't expect that a year later I'd be following a disastrous cholera outbreak in Haiti. But I was beginning to sense that no disease can be dealt with on its own; our health and illness are entangled with our culture, our economy, our politics.
We may live or die depending on our readiness to wash our hands. But our lives are also in the often filthy hands of well-tailored politicians and their servants. Unless we can somehow make them wash their hands, and then treat us with respect, our lives will be shorter and harder than they need to be.
If that happens in 2011, it will indeed be a happy new year for us all.
