As we shifted to indoor city life, outbreaks and pandemics whipped through society with alarming regularity. But technological changes have allowed us, in the developed world at least, to prevent many such pandemics. In the developed world, they are cheap, ubiquitous and mundane. Yet these technologies fight a whole host of outbreaks without our needing to know each pathogen’s name. Epidemics like cholera still occur in the developing world, but this ‌‌is a matter of a lack of global political will, not a lack of technological way.

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