In a move that has sent a tremor of gin-induced clarity through Whitehall's foggy corridors, Brazil has placed two patients under observation for the Ebola virus. Yes, Ebola. The word that makes even the most seasoned bureaucrat choke on their afternoon biscuit. The patients, having recently returned from West Africa, are now being monitored in the gleaming, antiseptic hellscape of a Brazilian hospital while the UK's Port Health Authorities, those unsung heroes of apocalyptic fiction, have dusted off their emergency protocol and issued a statement that manages to be both alarming and vacuous.
Let us parse this delicious morsel of international dread. Brazil, a country currently committing acts of ecological and political self-immolation, now finds itself on the front line of a possible viral Armageddon. Two patients. Two potential patient zeros. Two names that will be whispered in the same breath as Typhoid Mary if the dice roll poorly. The irony is so thick you could spread it on toast: a nation that burns the lungs of the world with deforestation is now worried about a haemorrhagic fever that turns its victims into liquefying nightmares.
But what of our own fair shores? The UK's Port Health Authorities, those grim-faced sentinels at the gates of Albion, have activated their emergency protocol. What does this entail? I picture a man in a high-vis jacket and a slightly frayed suit handing out leaflets that say, "If you have a temperature and have recently visited the Congo, please do not vomit on the customs officer." It is a performance, a theatre of preparedness designed to reassure the public that someone, somewhere, is doing something. And let us be honest, that something is probably a risk assessment that will be filed away in a drawer marked "When the SHTF."
The truth, dear reader, is that we are all just one errant mosquito bite or a sneeze on a packed tube train away from a glorious, statistics-driven apocalypse. The media will lap this up like a cat with a saucer of poisoned milk. There will be rolling news coverage, interviews with infectious disease specialists who will use phrases like "monitoring the situation closely" and "low risk to the general public" while their eyes dart nervously to the exit.
But I digress. The crux of this farce is the absurdity of preparedness in a world that cannot even organise a decent bin collection. We have the technology to sequence the genome of a virus in hours, yet we cannot stop a pandemic that was predicted by everyone who watched a single Spielberg film. Brazil will monitor its patients, the UK will update its protocol, and the rest of us will carry on, buying tinned goods and wondering if we should cancel that trip to the Amazon.
So here is my prediction: nothing will come of this. The patients will test negative, the protocols will be quietly archived, and we will all breathe a sigh of relief until the next time a tropical disease arrives at Heathrow on the red-eye. But in the meantime, raise a glass of whatever passes for gin in your local hostelry. Drink to the fine line between vigilance and hysteria. Drink to the Port Health Authorities, who are probably having a worse day than you. And for the love of all that is sanitary, wash your hands.
