Better luck next year, Taylor Swift.
Despite that singer making the final cut for Time Person of the Year, editors from that national magazine have gathered and awarded the honor to people who made an even bigger impact on the world than those dancing GIFs from the “Shake It Off” music video:
The Ebola Fighters.
In an article explaining the publication’s selection, Nancy Gibbs writes that these heroes “risked and persisted, sacrificed and saved” in order to help those in need.
During a year when an “outbreak turned into an epidemic,” men and women around the globe ran the risk of becoming a victim every time they treated someone with Ebola.
Well… yeah. But did they release back-to-back Billboard Music Chart toppers?
“If someone from America comes to help my people, and someone from Uganda,” Iris Martor, a Liberian nurse told Time. “Then why can’t I?”
Added Dr. Kent Brantly, an Ebola survivor:
“I still have the same flaws that I did before. But whenever we go through a devastating experience like what I’ve been through, it is an incredible opportunity for redemption of something.
“We can say, ‘How can I be better now because of what I’ve been through? To not do that is kind of a shame.”
For tireless acts of courage and mercy, Gibbs writes, and “for buying the world time to boost its defenses, for risking, for persisting, for sacrificing and saving, the Ebola fighters are TIME’s 2014 Person of the Year.”
Anyone care to argue with those points? Should Ebola Fighters have been named TIME’s 2014 Person of the Year?