NO, MAYOR DI BLASIO, CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT THE GREATEST THREAT TO NEW YORK: Cities and Pandemics Have a Long History.  Athens, Constantinople and other cities were humbled by plagues like the one that ended the Age of Pericles (and Pericles himself). “Only in the past century have cities ceased to be killing fields,” writes Edward L. Glaeser, and that was only because urban leaders focused on controlling disease instead of remaking society.

How can we reduce the threat of future pandemic and bring the world’s cities back to those halcyon days of November 2019? Almost assuredly, this is worth a massive increase in public-health-related spending. America’s nineteenth-century cities became healthier only because they spent as much on clean water as the federal government spent on everything else, but for the post office and the military. Covid-19 has destroyed trillions of dollars of shareholder value and generated a $2 trillion bailout. It makes sense to spend billions to avoid future losses of trillions.

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