If planes started falling out of the sky on a daily basis, we'd probably have some hard questions for transport authorities. But when the public health equivalent is upon us, we're alarmingly trusting that no official mistakes precipitated it.

And I'm not talking about politicians. Watching out for pandemics isn't the prime minister's job. We have an entire public health infrastructure whose singular founding mission is to stop us from being blindsided by disease. It obviously failed to do that.

And back to the plane example: If we were indeed being pelted by tumbling 737s all day, there wouldn't be a bunch of douchebags saying "um, where's *YOUR* pilot's license" when you questioned whether this might be too many plane crashes.

Now imagine that planes starting falling out of the sky in China starting in January. Then Iran. Then all of Europe was peppered with plane crashes by late February. And that through it all Transport Canada grounded nobody, changed nothing and simply advised pilots to be careful.