Polio was eradicated in America because connectivity requires code: all these people living together in an interdependent world got innoculated.■"Eradicated, but polio returns to the U.S.: 5 Amish children rattle health world," by Gardiner Harris, International Herald Tribune, 9 November 2005, p. 2.
How does it come back? The disconnected living among us: the Amish. We allow this disconnectedness because we respect religion.
But, as always, disconnectedness comes with danger.
Health officials say it's only a matter of time before somebody's crippled.
But the danger doesn't stop there. There's something wrong with the immune system of the 8-year-old girl at the center of the outbreak. Even with a vaccination she couldn't resist the disease. In a better, more connected life, she's not exposed to this danger.
Now, she's got the potential of being a Typhoid Mary of sorts.
This ain't about faith. It's about locating your responsibility to the world around you.
The microcosm that reveals Ö