Marie, I spent some time today reading more about T. E. Duncan and the Ebola contacts he had. Here are some highlights.
The neighborhood he lived in was ravaged by Ebola. So many people had died of it that no one would touch or tend to even the very young orphans, for fear of contamination.
Question: did Duncan mention during any of his screening interviews that he lived in a very concentrated Ebola hotspot?
According to on-the-ground reporting of the incident, Duncan and the brother of the pregnant woman, & whoever was helping them, were specifically trying to get her admitted to the Ebola ward of the hospital. Not the pregnancy ward, the Ebola ward. They were turned away because the Ebola ward was full.
Question: Did Duncan mention to anyone, in Liberia, Brussels or the USA, that he had been party to a group, in a taxi, that tried to get a pregnant woman committed to the *Ebola Ward* of the area hospital?
It has been reported that the pregnant woman’s brother, Sonny Boy, died of Ebola before Duncan left the same apartment where Sonny Boy lived. [There are dated, online photos of SB’s dead body, btw.]
Question: Did Duncan mention that he lived in close proximity to a young man who died of Ebola?
Lastly, Liberia had announced plans to prosecute Duncan for lying on his Ebola questionnaire.
Question: who is in a better position to know whether Duncan lied about his Ebola contacts: someone here in the US, or the Liberian authorities who shared a much closer physical proximity to Duncan at the time of his Ebola exposure?
It does appear that after the facts were reported, Duncan back-peddled on whether he knew he’d had contact with a person or persons infected with Ebola. The question is, do you believe the sourced reports that clearly indicate that Duncan both came into very close contact with, and KNEW he came into close contact with, the Ebola virus, or do you believe his subsequent denial? A related question, did he have any reason to deny that he knowingly exposed many, many people to Ebola?
The evidence is compelling. Duncan had much more contact with Ebola than he admitted to. If, for example, *all* he had added to his initial hospital interview was that people in the immediate Monrovian neighborhood in which he lived were dropping like flies of Ebola, he’d have gotten far more attention from the nurses, and almost certainly from the drs also. So even if one grants your insistence that he had no earthly idea the pregnant woman & her brother died of Ebola [despite the fact that their entire neighborhood was devastated by Ebola], he still withheld vital info. Info that likely, sad to say, cost him his life.
I just watched an interview with the neighbors of Duncan. The pregnant woman wasn’t confirmed with Ebola until after he left. The first person to get sick in his neighborhood became ill at the same time that Duncan did and by that time, Duncan was already in the states.
While the reporter was there, an official was making the rounds through the neighborhood trying to get a list of possible contacts. It was after the first man died that people started dropping like flies. By that time, Duncan was already confirmed and in the hospital.
The reporter *specifically* asked if Duncan knew that the pregnant woman had Ebola. The answer was a definitive “No. No one did.”
The vast majority of the articles are speculation written as fact. (Like the rumor that he fled the country to get medical care in the US after being exposed, when he’d been planning this trip for months.)
The fact is that it makes no sense for him to knowingly infect his family.
There are so many rumors that are being taken as gospel truth. People want to blame.
Fine. Then we need to blame the freaking CDC and the Obama administration. They’re the ones who’ve dropped the ball and, in all ways, caused this mess. They are responsible for all of this - including the two sick nurses. And they need to be held accountable. Their ‘don’t panic’ attitude has downplayed the danger to the point where an exposed nurse was free to travel. They should’ve transferred Duncan to Atlanta ASAP, instead they let an ill-equipped, untrained staff deal with it.