“Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to die of Ebola in the United States, was not the right kind of victim for the west” – because he was black, poor and African.
This argument is made by black feminist writer Hannah Giorgis (@ethiopiennesays) in an article in The Guardian, titled The problem with the west’s Ebola response is still fear of a black patient.
The former Independent MP Rob Oakeshott writes below, however, that Duncan’s death has shown up the “unprincipled, muddled state of global citizenry” where military crises are met with all hands on deck while health crises are met with “all for themselves”.
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A letter to a dead man from Rob Oakeshott
Dear Thomas
Thank you. For dying of Ebola. In America.
You have done what 3000 deaths in West Africa couldn’t do.
You have scared the ‘advanced’ world into lifting its head, and finally looking at the enormous tragedy unfolding.
You have now forced pressure onto first world Governments. Those same Governments wanting to look strong and in control through military might in Iraq and Syria, yet questionably weak when juxtaposed with Ebola.
Australia’s all-rhetoric, ‘shirt-fronting’ Prime Minister Tony Abbott had been silent on Ebola until your death. Now, at the very least, he is getting asked about it, and is being forced to talk about it.
His initial reaction is a typically insular one. He says Australia will not send health workers to West Africa due to their personal risk of infection. This plays as a typically coded message to his ‘Team Australia’, that infectious disease outbreaks are for the West Africans to deal with alone. Clean, white Aussies wash their hands and have toilets, after all. Not our problem.
On its own, this view makes perfect sense as part of an on-going Government theme built on dismissing ideas of global citizenry. The inward nails of climate change, refugees, and Internet connectivity, have all been driven into our new Fortress Australia.
That Ebola is someone else’s problem fits nicely as the latest plank to this fortress. Who said neighbours were for loving anyway? The world’s just too complex for any of that warm and fuzzy relationship stuff.
And this is where your death helps. It is timely in exposing this fortress as tough on rhetoric, but weak on reality.
Because now, in the very same press conference, Prime Minister Abbott is staunchly promoting Australian military involvement in Iraq and Syria, yet denying Australian health support for West Africa. Change the topic and he flips the argument. There are no principles behind the rhetoric of a principled stand.
What your death is doing is showing-up the political tough-talk on Islamic State as militaristic and muddled when compared to Ebola. Why one, and not the other?
Military crisis? All hands on deck.
Health crisis? All for themselves.
The unprincipled, muddled state of global citizenry. A good ol’ fashioned conspiracy theorist has never had so much ammunition to argue the military establishment is running the show.
If only Ebola was worshipped as some kind of fundamentalist religion, or the disease outbreak occurred in the oilfields. I suspect either of these might draw a more determined response.
This is exactly why your death matters. You engaged the media. And by doing so, you engaged the first world.
By dying of what you did, where you did, you have reaffirmed that disgusting formula of modern news – one death in America equals 3000 deaths in Africa.
And Governments will now respond.
Prime Minister Abbott will not be able to hold his selfish health position of turning a blind eye to Ebola. Ebola is leaving Islamic State for dead when it comes to threats on humanity. People pressure, and more and more horrific deaths, will demand greater action.
So thank you Thomas. You have saved many lives through your unfortunate death. You have engaged those with the power to stop Ebola spreading into the millions forecast.
Now, along with your death, the only thing missing is a graphic Ebola death on YouTube. Shared and liked, we’d then see the ‘advanced’ world moving in a way it should have long ago.
RIP Thomas Duncan, and all the unnamed like you, who have died from a highly contagious, but preventable disease. Yes, preventable.
• PS from Croakey: Readers may be interested in Ebola Deeply, an independent digital media project based in New York City.
Well said. Nice one Crikey, to revive Oakeshott’s voice of reason after parliament.
No doubt Mr Oakeshott will be first aboard the plane to Liberia.
Perhaps it’s just me, but this “letter” from Rob Oakshott seems particularly clumsy and graceless.
If I was a family member or friend of Thomas Duncan, I’d be pretty insulted by that first line.
It reads like a cheap shot.
Perhaps just you ?? I came here to thank Rob for still being involved in things that matter. I definitely feel a sense of anger and sorrow from him that this is the way things are.
I don’t think you can have read the rest of Oakeshott’s letter, Paddy. His point is that if anything good can come of a tragic death, it is that it confronts us in the ‘developed’ world with the fact that we are not insulated from Ebola, and that unless it is tackled and defeated in Africa, it will (according to a number of health professionals) become a global pandemic.
Richard
Blunt but pointed?
Ebola has been a second division side-show (as far as attention goes) for too long – because of the relegations of “who was suffering” – a repeat of “Rwanda”?
And the uniforms aren’t as photogenic as other causes – such as “vs. IS”?
Now – that it threatens the West – it’s been promoted to a first division game – in some places?
In others it’s still as (un)important as climate change – where “international citizen responsibility” is an optional extra?
Yes he could have worded the first line a little gentler. Perhaps “It has taken the death of Thomas Duncan to bring the West alive to the seriousness.”
The rest of his letter is sadly true.No headlines in ebola for Tony.
I could not say it better.
Oh and Paddy how Rob wrote it is incedental to the problem facing the world.
Australians have much more to fear from an idealogically-driven, tin-eared government which is putting Australian lives at risk in an unwinnable war but which ignores the greater threat of a global pandemic.
Humanitarian aid only to the Middle East and medical teams and support to help stop the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
Welcome to the Crikey Crypt Rob.
I understand your point, which dovetails nicely into the “ashamed to be Australian” theme so beloved of Crikey and their inner urban elite readers.
It would be helpful if you didn’t criticise the prime minister with a factually incorrect position, though that hasn’t stopped your mates on the Green / Labor benches in the past. Specifically, the Australian government wants to establish evacuation protocols in advance of sending anyone. These are difficult to establish as we would need to find a country willing to take an ebola infected non citizen, something that in my view is going to be hard.
But hey, don’t let that get in the way of an opportunity to bash Tony Abbott. Being factually incorrect has never stopped anyone here in the past.
Your main point, that a death in the USA has changed the attitude of those in the first world is correct though you might lighten up on the moralising. You could, for example, discuss the role of the media, which has given blanket coverage to your mate Thomas Duncan but virtually none to the victims in West Africa because they too have decided not to send crews there.
Hey! Go there yourself. No one’s stopping you.
When Mother Nature turns on us like a viper Tony Abbott simply closes his eyes.
He’s too focussed on maintaining the rage about Australians killed in MH17 that it leaves no brain space to either prepare, plan or assist the international community in preventing multitudes of other human beings expiring from a deadly plague.
If Obama makes the request for Australia’s assistance watch out for Abbott’s Olympian gold medal standard flip.
The US and UK have offered to evacuate any medical staff from any country. Last week I believe.
David, thanks for the permission to bash Tony. Happy to run with that. Sorry I’m not an inner urban elite but I’d like to be ashamed of a country run by Abbott as well, I hope you let me join in.
Rob doesn’t need to go there. Tony’s incompetence will ensure it comes here and saves us the airfare.
I hope I’ve been helpful in reinforcing your RWNJ superiority.
No you haven’t Y.
You don’t need my permission to bash Tony Abbott it’s become a national sport for the inner urban elites. Dang awkward that the Coalition is competitive in 2PP polls though.
The term “Inner urban elite” is a generalisation. There is no restriction on people from the suburbs or rural area joining in with their preachy, morally superior world view.
Could you just explain your logical process by which an incompetent Tony Abbott will bring ebola to Australia? You’re blaming him for something that hasn’t happened yet and though it’s the fashionable thing to do among the inner urban elites plus you, I think you should back it up with a fact. Any fact.
Just one will do.
David, being popular doesn’t equate to being right nor decent.
Obviously a generalisation, as that is how the morally superior, born to rule RWNJs operate.
How would facts help, you aren’t about to accept any that don’t meet with your RW worldview.
So none will have to do!
But you know what he says is true.
David Hand: Yclept clearly feels his keystrokes are wasted on you and there’s good evidence for that, but since I always seem to give people the benefit of the doubt (a nasty habit, perhaps) here I go.
By not addressing Ebola at the source, the Developed World (us included) have sanctioned a situation where over 1 million Africans will become infected. That’s the World Health Organisation’s estimate — you can look it up, although I guess you may consider the WHO as staffed by inner urban elites so you may not believe them.
The only option then will be to “ring-fence” Africa — no migration out (and therefore in). This is already implicit in the encoded “Fortress Australia” language we are hearing. It’s more explicit from US Republicans. Of course, Fortress Australia is a concept that the Abbott Government is used to selling, so this fits within the rubric perfectly.
As if 1 million Africans dying isn’t bad enough for that continent, I will give you sufficient credit to assume you will understand how such restrictions on migration will affect the regional African economy for years — decades — to come.
Now if the Abbott Government had a foreign policy of Swiss neutrality this might not be seen as particularly hypercritical, but given our current forays on the world stage I do challenge you to explain how ordering soldiers to a warzone can be an acceptable choice (hint: Australians may die), but providing logistical support to a humanitarian disaster that may dwarf the Asian Tsunami is a step to far.
Don’t even get me started on Abbott labeling the Iraq intervention as a “humanitarian mission”.
Elsewhere Michele Grattan suggests the PM should ring Obama to get assistance in logistics for our people to get to Africa. My recommendation is that the PM should ring Dr Megan Clarke at the CSIRO, Professor Brendan Crabb at the Aust Association of Medical Research Institutes, and Rob Chalmers at the KCA and:
Ask for a survey within the week of everything we know across our research organisations about Ebola, and then
Ask for proposed collaborative work programs to contain and fight the virus, and then
Write the cheque and get on with using our science for world health.
It’s not that hard.
“Right and decent” is of course the sustained self image of inner urban elites. Plus Y and Oakshott, of course. That’s why they’re all “ashamed to be Australian”.
The problem with this self image is that such self righteousness obscures the fact that it counts for nothing at the ballot box. More like a telephone box. In their scramble to blame Tony Abbott for the ebola outbreak, they miss just how overplayed this looks to the despised average voter. That’s because everyone on Twitter is soooooo supportive of the “ashamed to be Australian” campaign.
Just witness the panic that is spreading across America in response to the 24 hour all-channel coverage of poor Thomas Duncan’s demise. We have a cruise ship denied entry to a Mexican port because a passenger showing no symptoms worked as a supervisor in a lab that handles Duncan’s samples. We have schools that are closed because a parent of one of the students was on the plane that the nurse was also on.
Six degrees of separation means that my flight to Brisbane tomorrow might be cancelled.
The policy conundrum that such panic creates has been lost on Oakshott and the inner urban elites so keen to be ashamed to be Australian. We can’t possibly trust our health professionals and policy experts to handle this in the face of “gotcha” questioning from overly keen journalists seeking notoriety.
That’s it David, keep ignoring the issues raised, and continue to get in a lather that anyone should criticise your hero Tony for his hypocrisy and mindlessness.
David @ #19
Em… speaking of drama queenery…
Don’t think anyone is blaming “Tony Abbott for the ebola outbreak”.
What most blame the LNP for is their refusal to extract the digit on a number of issues and nevertheless mouthing platitudes… (ebola being the most urgent for now).
You can be as snide as you like about those you’ve been conditioned to repeat are “inner urban elites” (*), but refusing to support medical workers who wish to participate in what may eventually turn out to be a pandemic, is not only lacking in any form of grace and compassion… but downright stupid.
If not of our health professionals have ever worked with ebola… how effective do you think the uninitiated will be when the virus ‘lands’ here?
Wake up Australia!
(*) Please refrain from misusing the word ‘elite’ as a pejorative… there is nothing wrong with excellence.
Mr Oakeshott,
Thanks for dropping in… hope to see your ‘moniker’ more often now.
Thanks Rob Oakeshott, very well put!
Rob
You have articulated what I’ve been thinking for a while. I am saddened by the politicisation of humanitarian issues in this country.
Well said Mr Oakeshott! You are a great loss to the Australian parliament.