The news arrives with the familiar cadence of modern panic: three Ebola vaccines in advanced development, UK scientists at the helm. How reassuring. How predictable.
We have traded the terror of the unknown for the quiet hum of the laboratory. The Black Death had its flagellants; we have our virologists. But let us not mistake scientific progress for moral or intellectual vigour.
The true plague of our age is not the filovirus but the illusion that we can engineer our way out of every crisis, that the decline of the West can be reversed with a syringe. The Victorians understood that progress required grit, not just grant applications. They battled cholera with sewage systems, not just vaccines.
Our leaders, meanwhile, flatter themselves with press releases while the fabric of society frays. The Ebola outbreak is a reminder: we are still mortal, still fragile, still dependent on the old virtues of discipline and solidarity. The vaccines may save lives.
They will not save the soul of a civilisation that has lost the will to confront its own decay.
