There is, in fact, a vaccine for this strain of Ebola. It’s called Ubuntu
Haaaaaaaave you heard of Ubuntu?
Because I hang around in Europe, and because Desmond Tutu has been dead for more than four years, I spend a lot of time talking about Ubuntu.
Need a sociotechnical approach to AI regulation? Haaaaaaaave you heard of Ubuntu? It’s all about ultimate social flourishing and complex, interconnected systems.
Need to think through approaches to climate change amid a shifting zeitgeist? Haaaaaaaave you heard of Ubuntu? Postulate environmental personhood and you have a battle-tested philosophy ready to apply.
Outside of the US, and to a lesser extent Europe, you don’t have to force communal thinking into the conversation. And had Tutu been around to keep up the proselytising, it would be more of an embedded concept. Still, here we are, so in every policy discussion I’m the parrot going “Ubuntu, Ubuntu, Ubuntu”.
I know this must grow tedious to hear, and I apologise. But also, Ebola is of international concern again.
Haaaaaaaave you heard of Ubuntu?
A lot of factors make the current Ebola outbreak tricky. Not least of all the fighting in that part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, with roots all the way back in the Rwandan genocide now more than three decades ago.
The Bundibugyo strain of Ebola brings some complications too.
But in many ways, this outbreak is no different from the last big outbreak, or, at a high enough level of abstraction, from any deadly disease. It does not respect borders. Without intervention, it will get worse before it gets better. Intervention costs more money the later you start.
And having huge camps where internally displaced people are squeezed together and poorly-governed (in this case, rebel-held) cities, those don’t help.
I know the argument for foreign aid and international development is lost. Epidemiology is not economic development, though. You could say that a healthy person is a healthy person through other healthy people, that we are all interconnected and responsible for one another, whether we like it or not.
If only we had a way to think through the consequences of that, and what a considered approach would be.
Hey, come to think of it, haaaaaaaave you heard of Ubuntu?