The art of no deal:Why viruses don’t negotiate

Some problems can’t be negotiated away

Business memoirs often promise clarity in chaos. They offer rules that think big, project confidence, and control the narrative that work well in boardrooms and real estate deals. It’s understandable why these ideas travel so easily into politics and crisis leadership: they feel decisive, reassuring, and strong.

But global health emergencies, especially those unfolding amid war, operate under very different rules. Viruses do not negotiate. Bacteria do not care about leverage. And no amount of branding can substitute for clean water, functioning clinics, and public trust.

When disease collides with conflict, the logic of deal-making stops being merely incomplete and becomes actively misleading. That gap between the certainty promised by business bravado and the messy realities of war and epidemics is where this story begins.

When war and disease team up

War does not just kill through violence. Historically, it has been one of the most effective accelerators of disease. Conflict destroys hospitals, disrupts vaccination programmes, contaminates water supplies, and forces civilians into overcrowded camps where infections spread easily. In many wars, disease has killed more people than weapons ever did.

Modern conflicts are no exception. Cholera, measles, tuberculosis, polio, and Ebola are not accidental side effects of war. They are predictable outcomes when health systems collapse and trust erodes. In these environments, microbes thrive on exactly what war produces best: chaos.

“Think big” meets microscopic reality

One of the most celebrated ideas in business culture is “thinking big.” Large visions, bold moves, headline-grabbing projects. In commercial settings, that mindset can be useful. In public health, it often misses the point.

Epidemics are rarely stopped by grand gestures. They are controlled through unglamorous, sustained work: repairing water systems, training local health workers, maintaining cold chains, and vaccinating children one by one. These efforts are slow, technical, and largely invisible.

Tiny failures—a broken pipe, a missed dose, a rumor left unaddressed—can undo years of progress. In war zones, where systems are fragile to begin with, scale without substance is not ambition; it is risk.

You can’t leverage a virus

Deal-making logic depends on leverage: pressure points, incentives, threats, optics. It assumes the other side can be persuaded or intimidated into compromise. Pathogens do not respond to any of this.

A cholera bacterium does not care about political pressure. Mosquitoes do not react to media spin. During outbreaks in conflict zones, swagger and messaging are useless without trust and access on the ground.

In fact, heavy-handed approaches can backfire. When communities suspect that health interventions are politically motivated or externally imposed, fear spreads faster than disease. Vaccination teams become targets. Clinics are avoided. Outbreaks worsen. In these moments, humility—not dominance—is the only currency that matters.

There is no “Plan B” in a pandemic

Business advice often emphasizes optionality: always have an exit strategy, protect the downside, be ready to walk away. Epidemics do not allow that luxury.

Once an outbreak takes hold in a fragile or conflict-affected setting, there is no clean exit. Diseases travel with people across borders, through refugee routes, into neighboring countries. What begins as a local crisis quickly becomes a regional or global one.

Walking away does not reduce risk. It exports it. The only real hedge is long-term investment in public health systems before crises begin—and sustained support while conflicts drag on.

Branding doesn’t stop transmission

Another staple of deal-making culture is narrative control: shape the story, project confidence, dominate the media cycle. In health emergencies, this instinct can be dangerously misplaced.

Outbreaks are not reputational problems to be managed. They are biological events that unfold regardless of messaging. Worse, in war zones, attempts to “control the narrative” can deepen mistrust, especially when communities already feel exploited or ignored.

Rumors about vaccines, foreign plots, and hidden agendas can spread faster than any official communication. When that happens, even well-resourced interventions fail.

The most powerful symbols in these settings are not slogans or logos. They are consistent presence, transparency, and local partnerships that signal care rather than control.

Zero-sum thinking fails everyone

Deal-making thrives on winners and losers. Someone gains, someone concedes. Global health crises do not work that way. Treating epidemics as zero-sum games—where one side “wins” through dominance or denial—guarantees collective loss.

Pathogens are equal-opportunity adversaries. They exploit division, delay, and neglect without discrimination. History offers grim examples: famines compounded by measles, conflicts paired with cholera, displacement followed by tuberculosis.

In these syndemics—where war, hunger, and disease reinforce one another—there is no victory without cooperation. Ceasefires for vaccination campaigns. Shared disease surveillance. Funding that prioritizes systems over headlines. These are not signs of weakness; they are the only strategies that work.

What actually works in crisis

Public health responses in conflict zones succeed when they abandon theatrics and focus on fundamentals:

• Trust over bravado
• Infrastructure over image
• Coordination over competition
• Humility over certainty

Health workers in these settings are not trying to “win.” They are trying to keep clinics open, maintain supply chains, and reach children before the next wave of disease arrives. Their work is slow, technical, and rarely celebrated. It is also what saves lives.

The real lesson

Business memoirs promise mastery through confidence and control. Global health emergencies demand something else entirely: patience, cooperation, and respect for complexity.

Some problems cannot be negotiated into submission. They must be understood, contained, and prevented—often through efforts that never make headlines.

The real art of the deal in global health is not about making your name bigger than the crisis. It is about making the crisis smaller than the collective response. And in that kind of deal, everyone has to win—or everyone loses.

Author: Dr Selorm Avumegah, UK
Email: Selorm.Avumegah1@outlook.com
Substack: https://diseasechaser.substack.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-selormavumegah-phd-06227842

BY DR SELORM AVUMEGAH, UK

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