Thus the Financial Times today. “In an interconnected world, the risk of deadly epidemics is growing,” elaborates the newspaper. How very true. But the danger of pandemics has been understood for many a decade. All the warnings have been in place long enough to prevent their rapid spread. It is the entire civilization that is indeed inadequate in responding to any warning. The so-called west is inadequate in every sense of that word. Climate change is the best example, but there are lots of others, such as recent world wars. In fact, there has been no civilization adequate in this sense. China, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Peru, Mexico… Inadequate to boot one and all. But underlying all the failures to date is the inadequacy of the human race. Humans are not capable of an adequate response to anything before it is too late. Right now, Angelina Jolie’s breasts or George Clooney’s marriage are much more important to many than the crisis in Ukraine or the Middle East. And that is how it will continue. The only hope is evolution, which takes an awful amount of time to get anywhere at all, let alone to adequate responses to threats such as Ebola. Fuckety fuck.