Agreed. Even the most insensate and mercenary calculation
would be deficient in neglecting those populations who cannot
afford modern treatments. Not only are transmissible pathogens
indifferent to such distinctions, but there is also the matter
of incubation of novel diseases and development of resistance to
drugs. It won't do to restrict attention to the transmissible
case either since many non-transmissible diseases condition the
epidemiology (and evolutionary milieu vis a vis drug resistance)
of the transmissible ones. In a sense we are assisting the
microbial enemy by suffering rich and poor to coexist in close
proximity, since some drugs will inevitably find their way into
such incubators. We might as well email North Korea blueprints
of our ICBM interceptors.
It's difficult to be optimistic, but fatalism plays into the
hands of the enemy. I try to fight it but sometimes I need a
reason to say to myself, "I'm glad I'm old".
BTW L6 was a typo, I meant L5.