I think one of the problems of global air travel is that it has several externalities that are really not felt by its users. This is often tied to capitalism in

I think one of the problems of global air travel is that it has several externalities that are really not felt by its users. This is often tied to capitalism in the sense that it takes a capitalist system for the wealthy to be able to say "I don't care about these externalities and by my possessions I have a right to not care." Not that I think it makes much difference in terms of a pandemic, but maybe if travel patterns had been different the pandemic would have played out differently in turn.