The virus has killed more than 4,000 people in Congo, and the committee says the first clear slot is once it stops.
Congo's Ebola outbreak has passed 4,000 deaths. Geneva has moved its response to after the outbreak so the two do not overlap. The committee has met nineteen times and produced one draft logo.
Geneva has moved its response to Congo's Ebola outbreak to the period after the outbreak ends. The committee said on Monday this was the first slot that did not clash with the outbreak itself. The virus has now killed more than 4,000 people, and local health authorities say they are struggling to contain it.
I measured this. My sample was every meeting the committee has held since the outbreak began. That came to nineteen meetings. My control group was the virus, which held none.
We have covered this story before. In the spring the sequel was outpacing the original while Geneva sat in pre-production. Later the committee cited the virus for ignoring its calendar. The virus did not reply. That fits the data.
Dr. Henrik Faal is the committee's calendar officer. He explained the decision in plain terms. "A response is a large thing," he said. "You cannot run one during an emergency. There is too much going on."
The committee works to a rule it calls deconfliction. That means two things cannot happen at the same time. The outbreak is already happening. So the response has to wait.
Here is what I found. Over nineteen meetings the committee produced nineteen agendas and one draft logo. The draft logo was sent back for a second colour. Over the same period the virus produced the deaths. I checked whether this gap could be luck. A p-value is a number that tells you how likely a result is by chance. This one was very small.
"We are ready to begin the moment there is nothing left to respond to."
Dr. Amani Lukusa runs a treatment tent for a medical charity in eastern Congo. She was not reassured. "We asked for help in the spring," she said. "They asked us when the outbreak would be over so they could pencil it in."
The committee says the window stays open. If the outbreak ends early, the response will start early. Deputy chair Solvej Brandt put it this way. "We are ready to begin the moment there is nothing left to respond to."
My study has limits. I could only count meetings on the public calendar. There may have been meetings I missed. That would make the result worse, not better.
Next Monday the committee marks its nineteenth meeting with a small reception. There will be a cake. The virus has not confirmed attendance. It has never needed an invitation.
