He comes from a place with extraordinarily horrible government where he would expect to be arrested. And sure enough the Liberian government has said they want to prosecute him for his lying on the questionnaire in order to get on the plane. These countries are third world with horrible corruption, worse government, far worse police and far worse prisons. People from these places are naturally distrustful and even fearful.
No, not every hospital in Liberia is one big Ebola clinic. Mixing in Ebola patients with someone just having a baby or having a cut on their leg or broken arm or whatever from an accident or having a heart attack isn't happening where the pregnant woman Mr. Duncan helped to carry went. This was the John F. Kennedy hospital in Liberia. They even have a website:
http://www.hearttliberia.org/Home
It's not a few huts with thatched roofs for heaven's sake.
Apparently, they first took her to the maternity ward where she would certainly be recognized as having Ebola which would be why would have then took her to the Ebola ward or they took her directly to the Ebola ward. If they didn't know she had Ebola and first took her to the maternity ward they certainly would have learned it then and why they took her to the Ebola ward after. Either way, they would never have taken her to the Ebola ward at all if they still didn't know she had Ebola because they would never have allowed her to be put into the Ebola ward if they didn't think she had it and have her get infected with it by being in that ward.
Yes, there are some clinics that are just a few small buildings, but even the tent hospitals that Doctors Without Borders and other groups are setting up are only for those patients with Ebola symptoms though some places that are trying to do it on their own are putting the suspected non-symptomatic people in with the symptomatic patients guaranteeing that the suspected non-symptomatic people will become infected. This is not what happened in the case of Mr. Duncan helping the pregnant woman.
Of COURSE the Dallas hospital is at fault for not recognizing that in saying he was from Liberia meant that he might have Ebola, for diagnosing him as having some unknown flu-like virus, giving him antibiotics knowing that antibiotics don't do anything at all for any virus, etc. However, Mr. Duncan knowing he was possibly infected with the Ebola virus should have said so even though as I said in other posts I understand why he would not have - fear of what would happen to him legally if he admitted it.
He knew. There's no getting around the fact that he knew. It's why he lied on the questionnaire before being able to get on the plane out of Liberia because he knew if he didn't he wouldn't be allowed to get on the plane and would be stuck in Liberia. I can understand why he would have believed that a US hospital would be prepared and know what to do with a patient that was recently in a hot zone since that's what the media and officials have been assuring all along. But it wasn't until the incompetence of the Dallas hospital in being clueless from start to finish with him that we found out we're woefully incompetent and still woefully incompetent in how Dallas authorities have been handling the situation since.
Both the Dallas hospital and Mr. Duncan are to blame... the hospital for being so incompetent and him for not making it known that he had recently been in an Ebola hot zone, was in physical contact with an Ebola infected person and might be infected himself. He had every opportunity to do that on his first visit. The hospital in my view is more to blame for not recognizing what he had and sending him home, but he is responsible for knowing he might be infected and traveling here anyway.
I've said before that were I in his shoes I would have fought my way onto that plane to the US to get to a hospital not packed with Ebola patients (where he had up close personal knowledge of an Ebola patient being turned away) with modern medicine in a first world country. I would have lied like a rug on the questionnaire to get on the plane - you bet your ass I would. Once I got here though the second I got off the plane I would have gone straight to the first official looking person I saw and demand to be sent to isolation in a hospital having possibly been infected with Ebola, and please treat me. And I've also said that that's what I would have done because I grew up here, live here, and know that I wouldn't be arrested or murdered by a first world fucked up horrible government full of people that believe even now that Ebola is witchcraft or a government hoax. He has very different and very terrible experience living in Liberia, so I can understand his fear of being arrested, killed and going to a prison worse than anything close to what ours are like.
There's also the fact that he was examined by an American doctor in a modern American hospital and assumed that the doctor was correct that he only had some flu-like virus. Even us American's tend to believe what doctor's tell us is what's wrong with us, why wouldn't he? He very well might have left the hospital the first time thinking "Thank God the doctor knows that it's just some flu-like virus and not Ebola!!!" That doesn't change the fact that he knew he had physical contact with an Ebola patient and lied on the questionnaire to get on the plane out of Liberia.
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