The message is that we’ve waited too long to respond to Ebola. Bono’s One Campaign is demonstrating the power of single-minded creative idea.

Bono, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Morgan Freeman, The Walking Dead actress Danai Gurira, Will Ferrell, Thandie, Connie Britton, Akon, Ellie Goulding, German soccer star Per Mertesacker and African musicians Fally Ipupa and Angelique Kidjo…

All of these celebrities, and Liberian health care workers, Dr. J. Soka Moses and Louise Gaye, sat in silence in front of a camera doing nothing but wait. It may have been the most powerful role they had played in their careers.

One Campaign created a 2 minute video to illustrate the point that they’re still waiting for world leaders to fight Ebola, which has killed more than 5,000 people in the west African countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. The online campaign is asking for a unified response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and it is asking citizens to sign a petition demanding that world leaders strengthen health care systems in developing countries and end the outbreak.

“The waiting is causing the issue to propel itself. I thought it was a very powerful way to get that message across that we do need action. Sitting and waiting can lead to more problems.” Danai Gurira noted.

The video is being accompanied by the One Campaign’s online Ebola response tracker, which shows how much money countries have pledged to tackle Ebola, how much has been disbursed and how many health workers and other contributions have been sent to affected countries.

Bono, who co-founded the One Campaign, is also leading a reworked rendition of Do They Know It’s Christmas? featuring young artists like Sam Smith, One Direction and Rita Ora. This is garnering media attention, not so much by the good it hopes to do but because its lyrics are causing controversy.

The two lines, “Where a kiss of love can kill you and there’s death in every tear,” and, “There is no peace and joy in West Africa this Christmas,” were publicly attacked by the Ghanaian-born British rapper FuseODG. Several musicians have declined Bob Geldof’s offer to perform in the song.

Nigerian human rights activist, Chitra Nagarajan, told broadcaster, Al Jazeera, that she thinks it’s the stars’ images that stand to benefit the most. “It’s yet another classic sign of white Western saviourism, in this case with celebrities swooping in to ‘save’ the people of Africa. Not only does this take away the agency of people living in African countries who are the ones who actually lead and make change happen, but it perpetuates stereotypes of conflict, poverty and disease as the single story of the continent.”

The 2014 Band Aid single raised $1.7 million in the first four or five minutes it went on sale on November 17, according to Geldof and shot straight to the top of the iTunes charts. It was downloaded 206,000 times in ots first few hours. The original track by Band Aid, released in 1984, sold around 200,000 copies in two days.