I submit that while free trade and rapid transit are a great boon, they do have their drawbacks. Case in point: bird flu/avian flu/H5N1. If a few asymptomatic but infected people were to board passenger jets to New York, Kuala Lumpur, Paris, Berlin, and/or Johannesburg, we could be looking at a world-wide pandemic. This is precisely what EU officials are worried about, now that suspected infections have appeared in Turkey and Romania.

In defense of globalization, H5N1 probably showed up in Turkey and Romania due to migration of wild birds…