Two questions re 'End of the Whole Mess' (spoilers)

I read this story just about a week ago and - upon learning that it had been adapted for this series, almost immediately went out and got the DVD (I guess Stephen King has me right where he wants me :)

I honestly can't remember the last time I read a story that was so upsetting to me. (Everything I do for a living and almost all of my pastimes, involve some form of reading and/or writing; I can't imagine life without being able to think. Also, I imagined some of my friends - and also some writers, actors, etc. that I like and respect - getting caught up in this tragedy; envisioning their minds slowly coming apart was like a form of mental torture to me.)

However, I had two questions - the first of which involves a possible plot loophole and a way that Bobby might have learned of the dangers of the "calmative" protein in time.

My first question is: Why didn't Bobby notice (fairly early on in his research and long before he began distilling and distributing the special water), the correlation between the protein in the La Plata water and the high rate of Alzheimer's disease in the town? Bobby explained that the closer someone got to La Plata, Texas (the place where the water containing the "calmative" protein was found), the less incidence of violent crime there was and the higher the rate of Alzheimer's Disease. They seem to have spent a great deal of time in the town. I could see how they would have quickly noticed the lack of violent crime. (In the one auto accident that Howie witnesses, two very tough looking men involved in a fender bender simply apologize to one another and have a beer together; I assume other situations that would lead to violence in the outside world would be similarly peacefully resolved in La Plata.) But why did Bobby and the other researchers not notice the disproportionately-large number of people (relative to the total population) that suffered from Alzheimer's? At some point, wouldn't Bobby have either encountered people in town suffering from the disease, or at least been told by local officials (or by local word of mouth) that they had a serious problem with the disease in La Plata and the surrounding areas? And, since Bobby made the link between the unusual protein in the water and the unusual lack of violence, wouldn't he have also made the connection between the unusual protein and the unusually high percentage of residents with Alzheimer's Disease?

My second question is: Did Bobby and Howie ever reveal to the world that they had distilled the "calmative" substance and put it in the world's water supply? We did see some slow-motion scenes of a tickertape parade honoring Bobby and his family; unless this was supposed to be some kind of dream or fantasy sequences, I assume he was being feted for discovering the protein and releasing it into the water. The reason I ask is if the scientific community DID know about the protein, Bobby's studies of La Plata and its residents, etc., at least some other scientists (probably a lot) would want to do some of their own research regarding La Plata, given that that was where the protein was found. And even if Bobby was somehow unable to make the connection between the protein and the high rate of Alzheimer's disease in the town and the surrounding areas, wouldn't someone else have done so fairly quickly, maybe in time to prevent the epidemic? (Remember that there was a three-year interval between the release of the protein into the water supply, the end of war, etc., and the outbreak of Alzheimer's cases; if someone made the connection to Alzheimer's after, say, one year, there might possibly have been time to at least try to take the protein out of some of the drinking water, warn people not to go out in the rain, etc.)

Again - a profoundly frightening and depressing story and episode. Well done!