In a move that has sent shivers down the spines of the few remaining functioning neurons in Whitehall, the World Health Organisation has, with the dramatic flair of a matador waving a red flag, elevated the Ebola risk in the Democratic Republic of Congo to ‘very high’. The UK, ever the eager volunteer for global panic, has placed its health officials on standby. Standby for what, you ask? For the inevitable moment when a chap from Croydon returns from a gap year in Kinshasa with a temperature and a sniffle, sending the NHS into a frenzy of hazmat suits and hand sanitiser.
Let’s be clear: Ebola is the Harrods of deadly viruses. It doesn’t do things by halves. It goes straight for the organs, liquefying them with the efficiency of a German train timetable. And yet, as we stand on the precipice of a potential pandemic, the UK government is ‘monitoring the situation’. Dear Lord, they’re monitoring it. They’re probably using the same clipboard and stopwatch they used to monitor the last four Ebola scares, the ones that fizzled out like a damp firework at a council estate New Year’s party.
Let’s not forget the context: the DR Congo is a country so chaotic it makes the House of Commons look like a Swiss finishing school. It’s a place where war, poverty, and disease hold a permanent round-table discussion over who gets to ruin whose day. And now, into this pit of despair, steps the World Health Organisation, waving its ‘very high’ risk assessment like a man with a wet fish at a tennis match.
Meanwhile, in the UK, our health officials are on standby. Standby is the Englishman’s favourite state of being. It’s the same state we’ve been in for three years regarding Brexit, the same state we maintain for the inevitable heatwave that will cripple our railways, the same state we adopt when our children ask where babies come from. Standby is our national anthem.
But don’t take my word for it. Look at the evidence. The government has announced that ‘enhanced monitoring’ is in place at ports and airports. Translation: a man with a thermometer and a stick of Waggon Wheels will be asking passengers if they’ve been anywhere ‘nasty’. Because that’s what will stop Ebola: a polite inquiry and a chocolate biscuit.
And let’s spare a thought for the irony. We’ve spent years arguing over whether to leave the European Union, a bureaucratic fortress that at least coordinates health responses across 27 nations. But now, faced with a virus that doesn’t care about passport control, we’re going it alone, with the same confidence you’d have entering a lion’s cage armed with a spatula.
So, to the health officials on standby: I salute you. You’ll be called upon any day now to convince the British public that everything is fine, that we are safe, that the government has a plan. And you’ll do it with a straight face, because that’s what we do. We keep calm, carry on, and hope that the virus reads the briefing notes and decides it’s not worth the hassle.
Yours in viral scepticism, Biff Thistlethwaite.
