jmh – you wrote “It is presumptuous in the extreme to claim to have any idea of why HKB’H does the things he does when and where he does.”
Health was not CLAIMING, but merely asking if CR readers think that there is a POSSIBLE CONNECTION between the two. How many tzaddikim and baalei musser speak of this inyan, that when a natural disaster strikes we should not sit back blindly, but use our brains (like Health) and try to understand why Hashem is doing all this?!
We have no Nevi’im in our dor to tell us what Hashem’s message is, but the least we CAN do is think, ask, and try not to ignore such catastrophic phenomenon.