If there is one plea I’d make to Western media its this, JOIN UP THE DOTS.
While Trump continues to rot before the eyes of the world and golden ballrooms and crypto currency obsess those with wealth beyond imagining and even sense and Netanyahu’s orchestration of the US/Iran not-a-war hits all the wrong notes and the struggle of Ukraine sinks further down the headlines – there is a little something else happening in the world. Something linked to my blog two posts ago concerning Africa and the West’s entrenched double standards and moral failures when it comes to that continent.
The latest, no-context story is one that’s been brewing for months. Ebola.
We are currently getting all the usual images of distraught Africans struggling with the newest outbreak of this voracious virus.
The WHO (dumped by Trump last year) has declared a public health emergency while The West continues as before; clogging the mediashpere with celebrity shite and platforming political dregs.
Two wrong assumptions fuel our lack of attention to what occurs on the continent of Africa - a. it has nothing to do with us b. it will not affect us.
In fact Trump’s cuts to USAID and consequent decimation of on-the-ground organisations slowed the speed of detection and reaction.
This outbreak of Ebola is predicted to be the deadliest so far.
Already the US is quietly re-routing its affected citizens to European and Kenyan quarantine centres though there have been protests in Kenya. Meanwhile, Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ threw 10million Americans off affordable healthcare.
This side of the pond – let’s remember that during COVID then PM Boris Johnson drastically cut foreign aid and the present Starmer government is taking further funds from foreign aid to put towards military spending.
And during the last Ebola outbreak the UK too saw its citizens fighting for the right to be treated at home leading one nurse to re-enter without letting on she might be affected.
This as schools are about to break and Westerners, happy to be treated like cattle at airports, start hurling themselves around the globe in search of cheap consumables, sun stroke and escapism.
Its a dangerous mix of public wilful naivety and a media that rarely gives context.
What could possibly go wrong...