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Another explanation, quickly relegated to the isolation ward, rises from the conspiracy crowd, who question whether this might be one of those “€œbeneficent opportunities”€ of which quasi-socialists from Rahm Emmanuel to Nancy Pelosi tell us they intend to take advantage”€”and from which ultra-capitalists who have consistently told us there are too many proles walking around to suit their liking might benefit. Though I do not subscribe to this particular reasoning, knowing history, you won”€™t find me laughing at it.

Some will advance this counterpoint: the repatriation is merely a few sick people who pose no significant threat to the population. This seems to me a naïve overreliance on contemporary proficiencies.

During 1989 a Virginia company received Ebola infected animals from the Philippines. A similar case occurred in 1996 when subjects sent to Texas came up positive. Mercifully these were not varieties lethal to humans, but they might have been. Only months ago the CDC admitted that several of its workers were potentially subjected to anthrax contamination due to nothing more insidious than carelessness. These are the people in whom our trust is being placed when we import deadly ailments to our shores.

What will be the result of such reckless disregard of scientific norms in this instance? Nothing, I hope. The best-case scenario would be, as so many times in the past, humanity has a brush with extinction of which almost none are aware. In three months all eyes will be again looking for the whereabouts of a missing airliner or on the latest inconsequential crisis of the moment.

A worst case? We all hope this is not one … but given the mentality of many of those who rule we can be sure that even if it doesn”€™t arrive with this particular airlift of illness, it’s coming eventually.