On: Ebola returns: How to fight outbreak amid defunding of global health?

The news today is of an outbreak, and of walls. They tell us a wall can keep out a fever. One must admire the optimism of the architect who believes a line of bricks is a match for a line of cells. It is the same optimism, I suppose, that believes a committee’s declaration is a match for a continent’s suffering. To declare an ‘emergency of international concern’ is to perform the very first step of concern, which is to name it. The subsequent steps, which involve money and courage, appear to have been misplaced.

They speak of ‘defunding’ global health. There is a delicious paradox in that term. To ‘fund’ suggests a foundation, something solid and sustaining. To ‘defund’ is to un-create that foundation, which is a far more creative act than building it. It requires real imagination to believe you can withdraw the floor from a house and expect the ceiling to remain. We have become artists of subtraction.

I find myself thinking of masks. We are all so terribly fond of them. The mask of the border wall, which promises safety. The mask of the official statement, which promises action. The mask of economy, which promises prudence. Behind each is the same face: a profound and fashionable reluctance to be inconvenienced. A pandemic, like a truth, is always an inconvenience. It does not respect the arrangement of the drawing room. It enters through the window, not the door.

The death toll rises, and we discuss the funding. It is the modern equivalent of discussing the upholstery while the house burns. One cannot fault the logic; the upholstery is more immediately comprehensible than the fire. And after all, a well-worded statement on international concern is so much more comfortable to live with than the concerned international.