John McDermott
speaker
167 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 1 Jun
John McDermott’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.
Appearances
The Intelligence from The Economist · Spread too thin: Africa’s next Ebola outbreak · 19 May 2026
podcast
So it seems like the message from Washington is that Africa, you're on your own.
And that means the response will be led by a combination of international organizations, the World Health Organization, international NGOs, and African institutions, both African governments, but also the Africa CDC, which is a kind of child of the American version.
And it grew in sophistication during the COVID outbreak, so it's much better placed than it has ever been to respond to something like this.
Has the knowledge.
The question is whether it has the resources, given that this outbreak is already further along than some of the ones we've seen in recent years.
The good news is that
African governments broadly know what they're doing.
And
That's because they've had the experience of COVID and they've had the experience of dealing with several Ebola outbreaks in the past.
The knowledge is there.
The bad news is that if you like the institutional immune system that was built up over time, the mix of science and community health work is weaker than at any point in the past decade.
And while I do think that ultimately international and African expertise will get this outbreak under control, there is a warning about what we can expect in the future.
when this institutional immune system is sadly weakened.
Thank you, Jason.
Recently I went to East Africa to join the hunt for critical minerals.
John
I'm staring out over a spectacularly beautiful valley in western Tanzania.
I'm told that
Just over the undulating hills to my left one can see the Burundi border.
As I walk across the vantage point I have to be careful not to step in the defecations of the local Ancoli cattle.
Showing 101–120 of 167 · page 6 of 9
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