The public health game is a tough one to play. How do you achieve educating and transforming the public’s behavior for the common good without coming off as a bully or dour spoil-sport? The stakes are impossible: The indifferent audience, the management of the reproachful “tsk-tsk, you should know better” tone, and there’s only so many ways to proselytize a message of “getting one’s act together.” And where’s the cash for such endeavors?
But in the 1940s, the governing officials in the People’s Republic of China bulldozed their way through these issues (and more) and succeeded in accomplishing one of the most difficult public health objectives, the eradication of disease and vermin. But in doing so, they created an environmental catastrophe that epitomizes the tenuous balance between doing what’s best for mankind with the quirks and vagaries of Mother Nature.
