I know, the Good Book speaks of the four horses of the Apocalypse but this time I am going to speak of just two. Two with potential devastating consequences and which we, rather slowly, are becoming conscious may come to affect us in the near to medium future.

It is evident I will be writing about Ebola and ISIS.

Slowly, the events of the past days have filtered through the massed layers of our usual insular mentality, although with a rather skewed approach, which once again has to do (hasn't everything?) with illegal immigration.

That, however, is not the real problem. Of all the occurrences of Ebola, none has so far been carried by asylum seekers, but there have been indeed cases of people fleeing from affected countries and carrying the disease with them.

The lifetime of the disease, however, makes for speedy infection whereas most if not all boat people who arrive here would have been months on the road. The real problem, however, is travel. The cases where Ebola has travelled to Europe have been cases of people who flew from infected regions to Europe.

It is arguable that one cannot stop illegal immigration but surely one cannot in this day and age block travel. As long as there is travel, the infection will travel. That is what has spurred the developed countries into adopting precautionary measures which we will see spreading across the world in the coming days. Starting yesterday, at JFK airport in the US and spreading to other airports in the US, precautions started being taken.

New York's JFK airport has started screening to try to stem the Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 4,000 people.

Passengers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea - the worst-hit countries - will have their temperatures taken and have to answer a series of questions.

Checks at O'Hare in Chicago, Newark, Washington's Dulles and Atlanta's airport will begin in the coming days.

This comes after the first person died of Ebola in Texas on Wednesday.

Thomas Duncan had travelled to the US from Liberia, and was only diagnosed with the disease once he arrived in Dallas.

In an eight-hour exercise in the UK yesterday, actors simulated symptoms, some medical staff wore full protective suits and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt chaired a mock emergency meeting.

In one test, paramedics were called to a collapsed person at a Gateshead shopping centre. The patient was taken to Newcastle then, when Ebola was suspected, was transferred to the Royal Free Hospital in London, which has a specialist isolation unit.

In the other simulated case, a patient visited a walk-in centre in Hillingdon, London, and said they had recently returned from West Africa and had flu-like symptoms. After blood tests ruled out malaria, that patient was also taken to the Royal Free.

It is only a matter of time before Ebola cases start surfacing in Western Europe, but if the proper precautions are taken, these should be no mass epidemic.

It is not just the West that is taking precautions. Writing in the Financial Times on Wednesday, Nigeria's finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, wrote that Ebola has the power to terrify partly because of the distressing nature of the symptoms but also because of the reputation it has developed, of being unstoppable.

This is false. Through decisive leadership, with the right resources and a highly co-ordinated response, the virus can be managed and overcome, as the experience of Nigeria showed.

Speed is vital. Soon after the death of the first Nigerian victim, President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency and the Lagos-state government acted decisively to contain the virus. Protective gear, isolation tents, thermometers and millions of hand sanitizers were flown in. Health workers used contact tracing, isolation, treatment and massive public awareness campaigns to tackle the disease. Of 20 confirmed or probable cases, 12 recovered. At present, there are no known cases of the virus in Nigeria.

Control of the disease has proved more challenging for Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Nigeria's experience - which began with a single patient who was quickly quarantined - is clearly different from these countries, where the virus often spread through remote communities fort weeks and months before it was recognised.

When the word Ebola can come to mean so much, we must be specific about describing the scale of the outbreak. There are 16 countries in West Africa and 54 on the continent. So far, only five countries in West Africa have recorded cases of Ebola - Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal. While there is little room for complacency, the latter two countries have contained the disease and have no more Ebola cases.

Next horse of the Apocalypse is ISIS, a very different animal. The spread of ISIS has been even, if anything, more rapid than Ebola. In just a few months, it has redrawn the map last set in the 1920s, erased the frontier dividing Iraq from Syria, practically overrun Iraq, and yesterday's latest news is that it is encircling the Syrian border town of Kobani.

Several hundred civilians are still believed to be in Kobani. UN envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura has warned they could be massacred by IS if the town falls.

The situation in that precise place has been rendered even more dangerous by the indecision that has come over the Turkish government which has not budged an inch to defend the border town, just like in World War II the Red Army stopped on the banks of the river while the Nazi troops massacred the Jewish ghetto. The best analysis that can be made is that the Turkish government is more afraid of giving in to the Kurds than in fighting ISIS and saving the innocent who may be massacred.

Elsewhere, ISIS has become a byword for terror. ISIS fighters control large stretches of territory in Syria and Iraq. The group is known for its brutal tactics, including mass killings, abductions of members of religious and ethnic minorities, and the beheadings of soldiers and journalists.

There is a similarity with the rapid spread of Islam in the seventh century, spearheaded by terror and brutality but there are also a number of dissimilarities. ISIS reinforces the deep split in Islam between Shiites and Sunnis and it has turned Iran into an ally of the West after so many years as its pariah.

It is small, lightweight and rapid and is enhanced by the advanced weaponry from US stocks it has found in Iraq abandoned by the Iraqi regular army.

It is aggressively against Christians and what it says are heretics but only, so far, as they are to be found in the regions it has 'liberated'.

It remains to be seen what will be its attitude to secular Turkey, although present-day Turkey is not as secular as it used to be.

Nearer home, there has been much talk about ISIS infiltration into Libya. Now I agree that Libya today is a failed state and that the outcome of the fighting in the country is not yet assured. However, there are some small signs of an improving normalcy.

Assassinations still take place on a daily basis but there is talk about re-opening Misrata airport to flights from Europe and re-opening of some sea connections.

Again, we have a sizeable Libyan community here but apart from one incident where bottles were thrown, the factions have lived together in relative peace, despite the presence of some key figures with links to the fighters back in Libya.

Again, is this enough to lapse into complacency? While remaining vigilant and aware of all that is taking place, it does seem that the most dire predictions are not supported by facts on the ground.

 

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