In a development so absurd it would make a flamingo blush, the World Health Organisation has apparently decided that the best way to tackle the Ebola crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo is to dust off the tattered playbook of one Boris Johnson. Yes, the same Boris Johnson whose vaccine rollout was less a scientific triumph and more a national game of ‘Pin the Tail on the Herd Immunity.’ The same man who once described the virus as ‘Nature’s way of weeding out the weak’ before promptly catching it himself and blaming his own haircut. Now, however, his strategic genius is being touted as a model for global health. Let us pause to consider the sheer, unadulterated gall of this proposition.
The logic, as far as anyone can decipher from the cloud of champagne fumes and mangled metaphors, goes like this: the UK’s vaccine programme was a rip-roaring success, therefore every country should emulate it. Never mind that the UK’s success was built on a scaffolding of scientific funding, a national health service that occasionally works, and a population conditionally willing to endure lockdowns if it meant a pint by summer. Never mind that Johnson’s own leadership was a cacophony of mixed messages, from ‘Stay Alert’ (a command so vague it could apply to a game of chess) to ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ (a policy that turned restaurants into superspreader discos). Apparently, the mere fact that we got jabbed quickly enough to keep the economy afloat is enough to elevate the entire fiasco to gospel status.
But wait, there’s more. The DR Congo is not a leafy Surrey suburb with a functioning postcode system. It is a vast, tropical nation riddled with conflict, distrust, and logistical nightmares that would make even the most seasoned NHS manager weep into their Earl Grey. The idea of applying a strategy that revolved around centrally coordinated mass vaccination, with a government that was barely holding the reins, to a region where vaccine hesitancy is often literally a matter of life and death (thanks to decades of Western exploitation) is not just naive. It is borderline criminal.
Let us not forget the key ingredient of the Johnson era: sheer, unadulterated luck. The UK’s vaccine success was less a product of brilliant strategy and more a combination of early access to the Oxford vaccine, a bit of geopolitical bargaining, and the simple fact that we were awash in spare cash from the bottomless magic money tree of quantitative easing. None of this applies in the Congo, where vaccines arrive with the regularity of a good joke at a funeral. And yet, the WHO is now reported to be citing the Johnson strategy as a template. I half expect them to next suggest that the key to fighting Ebola is to appoint a health minister with the charisma of a damp, slightly incompetent lettuce.
The sheer hubris of this reeks of the worst kind of colonial paternalism: the idea that what worked for a wealthy, post-industrial nation can be copy-pasted onto a developing country with a different disease, different culture, and different infrastructure. It is the intellectual equivalent of suggesting that a solution to a famine is to tell people to ‘just have a prawn sandwich.’ The real lesson from the UK’s vaccine rollout is not that Johnson was a savant, but that even a bumbling government can succeed when given enough resources and a dash of luck. And that lesson, my friends, is not one that can be taught. It can only be prayed for.
So here we are, in the fever swamps of the 21st century, where the dead hand of Boris Johnson’s legacy reaches across continents to guide our response to a catastrophic virus. If this is the future of global health, I suggest we all start stockpiling gin and arranging our affairs. The end is nigh, and it will be delivered with a bad joke and a shambolic haircut.
