First, let us celebrate the good news: it seems that the scourge of Ebola is gradually abating. Tragically, people are still dying in large numbers in Africa, but the spread of the disease has been contained.
Now the bad news: at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, there is a growing consensus that the Ebola fight could merely be the prelude to a far bigger medical disaster.
After all, we have seen worse medical crises before now: back in 1918-19, the Spanish flu pandemic killed 50m-100m people in a year. And that was before people were whizzing around the world on aircraft. These days diseases move and mutate frighteningly fast. Or as Bill Gates told the Financial Times: “There are many pathogens out there that