What are the advantages and disadvantages of globalization?

Globalization leaves us vulnerable to infectious diseases

Question: What are the advantages and disadvantages of globalization?
Position‹2 of 2: Globalization is bad
Argument‹2 of 5›: Globalization leaves us vulnerable to infectious diseases

In a hyper-connected world, infectious diseases can spread more rapidly, increasing the likelihood of an international pandemic.

The argument

A plethora of factors resulting from globalization can impact the spread of infectious disease, and the most direct of them is simply how much more people now move. According to Brian D. Gushulak, increased migration within the past few decades has completely reshaped the world in ways we could never have foreseen. He cites the movement of people between many countries as an essential factor in the spread of disease, the likelihood of transmission among people skyrocketing as we move from country to country. The mechanism is not complicated: a pathogen's reach is set by the reach of its hosts, so a world in which more people cross more borders more often is a world in which a local outbreak has more routes out of the place it began. Several other determining effects of globalization compound the risk. These include industrial development, the increase of the food trade — which can carry all kinds of unwanted bacteria and infection — and the threat of bioterrorism. Each is a different kind of vulnerability, but they share a structure: the same integration that makes goods, labour and expertise available everywhere also makes the hazards attached to them available everywhere. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has shed new light on both the dangers and benefits of such close interconnection in the age of the Internet and social media, denoting how rapidly such a harmful and deadly disease can spread in this day and age, with COVID-19's infection rate notoriously high and more transmittable than we have ever seen before. On this argument the episode was not an aberration but a demonstration of what the existing arrangement makes possible, which is why the vulnerability is counted against globalization rather than merely alongside it.

Premises

[P1]As Brian D. Gushulak notes, decades of increased migration and the movement of people between countries dramatically raise the likelihood of disease transmission worldwide. [P2] Other globalization effects—industrial development, an expanding food trade that can carry bacteria and infection, and the threat of bioterrorism—compound this risk, as COVID-19's rapid, highly transmissible spread demonstrated. [C] Therefore, because globalization leaves us vulnerable to infectious diseases, globalization is bad.

Counter-arguments

Infectious diseases have been spread incredibly rapidly for thousands of years, and though globalization connects the world on an economic and social basis, the in-person, intimate contact required for contraction of the disease has not increased because of globalization. There is no evidence to suggest that advancement in industry and technology on the scale of social media serves as a disadvantage. Social media has actually helped spread awareness about the coronavirus very rapidly so that people can quickly understand the risks and stay socially isolated from one another. In this way, one could say that globalization has actually helped the slow of infectious disease. Increased migration also offers no evidential correlation to the spread of disease, and most who enter new countries are given shots and vaccines for foreign diseases upon their arrival. Based on the arguments, globalization has not increased the rapidity of the spread of disease.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Globalization is not the only cause of these phenomena, nor is it the sole contributor toward the spread of infectious disease. Blaming the spread of disease on globalization completely disregards all other potential contributing factors and is, therefore, illogical. [Rejecting P3] Globalization does not necessarily cause the spread of infectious disease, based on the aforementioned arguments.