The outbreak that hasn’t reached you

One · What happened

Second-largest on record, with no case in this country

The CDC updated its report on the Ebola outbreak on 5 October. The outbreak, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is now the second-largest on record. The virus is Bundibugyo, a type of Ebola virus. As of 2 October the report counted 8,463 confirmed cases and 4,082 confirmed deaths, almost all of them in Congo. The outbreak passed 1,000 confirmed cases within forty days of the response starting, where the 2018 outbreak in Congo needed about 235 days to reach that mark. The agency writes that the present outbreak is spreading substantially faster than previous Ebola outbreaks.

CDC lists what stands in the way of the response. Fighting in the area complicates the tracing of contacts and the work of infection control. Healthcare and laboratory services are hard to reach. The agency says violence against healthcare workers and shortages of protective equipment are leading to healthcare workers becoming infected while treating patients. Frequent movement across borders raises the risk of spread to neighboring countries. CDC adds that lack of trust in the government and misinformation make communicating about Ebola more difficult.

A second report on the same obstacles came on 2 October from CIDRAP, the infectious disease news service at the University of Minnesota. According to the report, fifty healthcare workers had died in the outbreak. The report added that no vaccine or treatment targets Bundibugyo. Confirmed infections for the last week of September numbered 278, the lowest weekly count since mid-June. An epidemiologist quoted in the report said the drop may reflect underreporting, as fighting and community resistance have kept teams from continuing surveillance in some health zones.

No case has been confirmed in the United States. The likelihood of Ebola spreading to this country is rated very low. Entry is temporarily restricted for travelers who have been in Congo within the previous twenty-one days, and travelers from Uganda or South Sudan must come through designated airports for enhanced screening. How strict those measures should be is a matter for the officials who set them. No count in the update settles it. CDC calls the situation rapidly evolving and expects its counts to change, so the assessment is the agency’s reading as of 5 October.

Two · What it is doing

What the news does at a distance

“Very low” is the agency’s phrase for the likelihood of Ebola spreading to the United States. A reader can accept the phrase and still catch himself going back to the update for a second look. Some replay the strangers they sat near on the last flight. The dread has nothing to do. An outbreak an ocean and a continent away leaves it only the phone in a reader’s hand to work on, and each refresh hands the fear a little more material.

The second reaction costs the reader less and gets less notice. He reads 4,082 and files the number with the other disasters in other countries, and what he feels is a small relief that his own street is not on the list. A few go on to pass a verdict on the place, its clinics and its government, as if distance proved something about the dead. Fifty healthcare workers, people who went toward the sick, have died in the outbreak according to CIDRAP. Both of these reactions leave out the people who have died. Behind the 4,082 stand a healthcare worker in a treatment ward and a family waiting outside it, and neither appears in either reaction. A headline about Ebola wakes up the fear of death that so many people carry unnamed. The second reader is up against the plain difficulty of caring about a neighbor he has never met.

Three · Where the ground is

Eighteen under a tower, and what Jesus asked about them

Some people came to Jesus with news about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices (Luke 13:1). He asked them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way?” He gave the answer himself. “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” He went on to the eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell and put the same question about them, with the same answer (Luke 13:2–5).

“Worse offenders than all the others” is the comparison Jesus refuses for the eighteen. He refuses the same comparison for the Galileans, so nobody reading about Congo gets to say the dead had it coming. Jesus then told the crowd that they would perish too unless they repented. The passage sends nobody off to refresh the count. Jesus also leaves nobody free to treat the dead of another country as somebody else’s business.

The fear of dying

“I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus told Martha at her brother’s tomb. “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). The writer of Hebrews says that Christ “himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Hebrews 2:14–15). The passage calls the fear of death a slavery. The release comes from what Christ did in his own body, and no case count adds to it or takes from it. Neither passage promises a believer a body that stays well.

Relief sent from a distance

Barnabas and Saul were the two men who carried the relief to the elders in Judea (Acts 11:30). A prophet named Agabus had foretold a great famine over all the world. The disciples decided to send relief to the brothers living in Judea, each “according to his ability” (Acts 11:28–29). A congregation today can send help to people it will not meet, through people the pastor knows.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

Most of the five jobs run through a church and a telephone, because the outbreak itself is half a world from most readers.

1. 01

   Send something toward Congo through your church.

   Find out from your pastor or a deacon if the congregation already has a way to reach relief workers or believers in eastern Congo, and put a gift into it this week. The church in Antioch decided that each would give “according to his ability” and sent the relief by the hand of Barnabas and Saul (Acts 11:29–30). Settle the amount first so the decision gets made once.

2. 02

   Find the person in your church with family in the region.

   A congregation of any size may hold somebody with a sister or a classmate in Congo or one of its neighbors. Your pastor will know, or can find out. When you meet the person, ask what he has heard from home before you say a word about the outbreak. Jesus told the lawyer to go and do likewise after the story of the neighbor who showed mercy (Luke 10:36–37).

3. 03

   Give the most frightened person at your table the agency’s own words.

   Tell him that CDC reports no confirmed cases in the United States and rates the likelihood of spread to this country as very low. Then stop talking and let him ask what he wants to ask. Proverbs 22:3 says that “the prudent sees danger and hides himself.” A household can see the danger at its true size tonight, with the agency’s assessment in front of it.

4. 04

   Read Luke 13:1–5 with your family and ask who you were quick to blame.

   After the reading, ask each person at the table to pick a group in the news whose trouble he has quietly put down to something they did. Let each answer take the time it needs. Luke records Jesus telling the crowd that neither the Galileans nor the eighteen were worse offenders than their neighbors (Luke 13:2–5).

5. 05

   Phone one believer and report what frightened you most.

   Say which part got to you, the thought of getting sick or the thought of dying, and then read two verses between you. Hebrews says Christ shared in flesh and blood to deliver “all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Hebrews 2:15). Let the other believer answer from where he stands.