Listen. The World Health Organisation is wringing its hands again, because Ebola has once more slithered out of the shadows in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Forty deaths, they say. Twenty-one cases confirmed. And Britain? Oh, Britain has its medical teams on standby, polishing their hazmat suits and dreaming of the NHS’s finest hour. But let us pause, pour a stiff gin, and examine this theatre of the macabre through the correct lens: the one smeared with the grease of political farce.
This is the same Congo that has been battered by Ebola like a piñata at a particularly grim birthday party. The same Congo where the virus is as predictable as a public schoolboy’s first sneer. And yet, every time, the world gasps. Every time, the chattering classes whip themselves into a frenzy of concern. Every time, the British government announces a “contingency plan” that sounds suspiciously like a press release written by a man who has never seen a body bag.
Let me be clear: Ebola is a horror. It liquefies the human body from the inside out. It is a level of suffering that would make Dante pause. But the response to Ebola has become a ritual, a dance of sanctimony and bureaucratic foot-dragging. The WHO declares an emergency. The BBC puts on its most sepulchral voice. And somewhere, a man in a suit with a vague medical qualification is wheeled out to say “deeply alarming.”
Why is it always “deeply alarming”? Why not “astoundingly predictable” or “frankly, we should have seen this coming from orbit”? Because that would require admitting the truth: that the global health system is a creaking, underfunded contraption held together with charity wristbands and press conferences.
British medical teams are on standby. Good for them. They are the finest in the world. But stand by for what? To be deployed to a conflict zone where aid workers are attacked, where the locals are suspicious of white coats with needles, where the logistics are a nightmare of rutted roads and broken fridges. They will do their duty, because that is what they do. But does anyone in Whitehall really believe this is a long-term solution?
The virus mutates. The poverty deepens. The political will falters. And every few years, we go through this pantomime anew. So raise your glasses, ladies and gentlemen, to the great circle of life: Ebola emerges. The world panics. We spend millions on a temporary fix. The virus retreats. We pat ourselves on the back. And then, somewhere, a forest is felled, a bat is eaten, and we start the music again.
This is not reporting. This is whistling past the graveyard. And the graveyard, my friends, is full.
