This human element is one of a number of things which has defeated all the “conventional” public health strategies in West Africa.
While our health care facilities, the number of health care we have to draw upon, and our communications systems are far better here, the human element is the same. Denial, dishonesty, hiding and flight are reflexes that are common when humans are faced with such an unprecedented crisis.
Note that the man's family was also similarly disincline towards honesty. They also did not disclose his travel history. The man got sick enough that EMS had to be called and yet until then, and very likely even then, no one disclosed that the man had traveled from Ebola-stricken Liberia.
The virus will use this human tendency all that it can in its efforts to spread.”
I suspect this patient, as Patrick Sawyer, was ‘economical with the truth’ (to quote one of the Nigerian medicos).
Given the nature of ER’s in urban areas, the victim could have been waiting in ER for some time on both his trips there. This means that the exposed people were those who sat next to him in ER either time, plus all the people who examined him. And anyone he coughed or sneezed at. Over a period of several hours on both occasions. Not to mention his family and anyone he saw in the two days’ interval between September 24 and 26, and the ambulance crew on the 26th.