In an utterly baffling turn of events that has left the World Health Organisation’s spreadsheet jockeys in a state of profound confusion, actual Ebola patients have dared to do the unthinkable: they have recovered. Yes, in the so-called ‘epicentre of hell’ where the virus has been gleefully tap-dancing on human immune systems, a handful of brave souls have shrugged off the Grim Reaper’s bony grip and stumbled back into the land of the living, blinking in the harsh light of a world that had already written their obituaries. The local medics, bless their gin-soaked souls, are calling it a ‘miracle’ but we all know it’s just a statistical hiccup in the great ledger of global doom.
Meanwhile, the international health establishment, which has been nervously polishing its pandemic preparedness manuals and stockpiling hand sanitiser, is now faced with the truly terrifying prospect of… good news. How does one file a situation report on hope? Where is the template for ‘fewer body bags than expected’?
The answer, of course, is that there isn’t one. So they’ve defaulted to their favourite pastime: issuing cautious alerts about ‘ongoing risks’ and reminding us that the virus hasn’t actually packed its bags and swapped its Ebola for a sombrero. The recovery of these patients is, by all accounts, a rare glimmer of joy, which naturally means it must be immediately smothered with a wet blanket of bureaucratic doom.
‘Be vigilant,’ they cry, ‘the outbreak isn’t over yet!’ Well, pardon me for not breaking out the party poppers just because a few chaps didn’t conveniently expire on schedule. But let’s not kid ourselves: this is a story about the absurdity of our own fear.
We’ve built an entire global health architecture on the assumption that the worst will happen, and when it doesn’t, we don’t know whether to celebrate or keep hoarding the toilet paper. The survivors, for their part, are probably just grateful to taste solid food again, but they’ve become unwitting symbols of a system that has forgotten how to process any outcome other than catastrophe. The World Health Organisation, that grand old dame of disease control, has been wringing its hands over this for months, and now it must update its graphs with a line that goes down instead of up.
The horror. The sheer bloody inconvenience. The real danger here isn’t that Ebola will come back with a vengeance, because it probably will.
No, the genuine threat is that the global health establishment will have to rewrite its funding proposals, and we all know how traumatic that can be. So let’s raise a glass of airport gin to the survivors, and another to the health workers who ignored the script and saved lives anyway. And for the bureaucrats, a thimble of lukewarm tap water.
In the battle between human resilience and institutional inertia, for once, the humans have won. But don’t worry, I’m sure a new pandemic is just around the corner to restore order. Stay terrified, my friends.
It’s the only sane response to an insane world.
