Ebola's not the point

As a science editor, I'm surprised I've survived this long without a bout of Ebola-fatigue.

We've been covering the outbreak in West Africa since March, when the death toll was still very low.

Why did we start?

It wasn't because we cared. No. "Ebola in Africa" is dog-whistle journalism.

Headlines like "Gut-Wrenching Images Show The Brutal Reality Of The Ebola Outbreak In Liberia" on The World Post send us rabid. "Ebola? Sounds scary. Africa? Isn't that where AIDS started? Isn't there a flood of illegals from Africa trying to get into Europe? OMG! I'm going to die."

We don't care - at least, not until people start getting sick and dying in our own back yards.

The forgotten people

I stumbled on the above "gut-wrenching" article via some weird-news link (which also promised pieces on an "eight-limbed boy" and the "era of big booty.") I looked at the pictures. And my gut was indeed wrenched.

But not for all the crying, desperate people, not even for the image of a burial team removing the corpse of a four-year-old from a one-room apartment.

No.

My gut was wrenched because of the apartment itself, the dilapidated-everything, the four-to-a-room, the solitary candle, the peeled, damp ceiling, and the wrecked tiling.

What wrenched my gut was that I'd forgotten that this is how it is. To the casual, outside observer, some of the images we're getting could have been taken anywhere. Anywhere in Africa and in any situation. But we're anaesthetized to images of crying black mothers holding suffering children. This is#EverydayAfrica. I'd forgotten just how forgotten the continent and its people are.

Genocide by forgetting

We let this happen. Everyday. Always.

Sure, we're happy to send our workers to Africa (to siphon off natural resources), we set up research labs, ogle elephants and tigers, we buy rare CDs by Fela Kuti, spears and facemasks, and we even do a spot of development work.

But everyday we also commit what I've come to call "amnesiatic genocide" - genocide by forgetting. We have forgotten how to care.

Mad men and vaccines

And suddenly we're in this mad rush now to find a vaccine. And my question is: who will benefit?

Those who are at risk in their thousands? Local research teams? Homegrown pharma? Or "big pharma"?

One prominent researcher recently told me in an interview that his team - and its candidate vaccine - were focused on helping healthcare workers in West Africa. Local and international staff, he added swiftly.

It's true that healthcare workers are dying. But only in single digits, not in their thousands.

Is it really possible even now, when we've got this outbreak as an excuse to trial untested vaccines in the field, that we're willfully forgetting the people who face the greatest risk? Of course it's possible.

We forget them every other day.

You pull up the ladder behind you and let the poorest Africans live like dogs and soon enough you stop seeing them as human. Soon enough the only Africans we know are Robert Mugabe and Oscar Pistorius, and we stop prioritizing the needs of real Africans.

I'm just waiting for the first government treasurer to blame a national deficit on all the money that's going to Ebola. It will happen, mark my words. We, the international "community" (and the media) are that arrogant.

The World Post example is not unique. DW does it too - if I could include the words "Ebola," "porn," "Nazi" and "economic downturn" in every headline, I would. And it would get clicks.

It saddens me, but I'm okay with that. To make it all even worse, I have family in Kenya, whom I haven't visited in 30 years.

I've forgotten their faces and how they live. And I should be ashamed.