I’ll be relatively brief, because I’m not going to reiterate a lengthy argument, most of which I’ve said before.

What you know about ebola, what you think you would have known about ebola under the same circumstances (which is not necessarily what you actually would have known, because hindsight is 20/20), what you think he knew (or should have known, or would have known) about ebola, what he in fact suspected about Williams, what he should have (or what you think he should have) suspected about Williams, what he at one point suspected but rejected about Williams, and what he in fact knew about Williams or ebola when he filled out the questionnaire, how you would have interpreted the questionnaire, how authorities meant it to be interpreted, how Duncan interpreted it, and how a reasonable person would have interpreted it, could all be different things—and most of them probably are different things.

The question on the questionnaire very obviously refers to a dead body and not a living one. According to all the information we have, he did not touch a dead body.

When he touched the living body of Marthalene Williams, who was ill with what was considered malaria or pregnancy complications, he was not in an ebola area. He was in his neighborhood, which had not seen any ebola yet.

I’ve already dealt, quite exhaustively, with the matter of the ebola clinic, and given you the link. I’m not going to repeat it here. I will just reiterate the following point: do you know that he knew the medical scope of each medical facility (and there were many such facilities) to which they were taking her each time the cab drove somewhere during a long, hectic, frantic night, with an ill woman, where the cab driver was driving and the relatives of the woman were in charge, and Duncan was basically a helpful porter? I guess you know that he knew the medical definition of every single place they went.

Having read tons of articles on the subject, it appears clear to me that they were taking her everywhere they could, trying to get help, rather than starting with a diagnosis (ebola) which they clearly did not have, and taking her to specialized places that dealt with it. They went from place to place to place to deal with what they saw as a crisis, and in a situation where the only medical opinion they’d gotten is “malaria.” One of the facilities turned out to have been an ebola clinic. Who directed them there, and why? A cab driver? We don’t know. But it tells us nothing about their state of mind and knowledge of what she had (nor is it alleged that at any time that evening, any medical person told them “ebola” was her diagnosis). In fact, all their actions that evening and subsequently indicate they did not know she had ebola, not then, and not till a bunch of them had come down with it, over a week later. Including Duncan, who by that time had been in Dallas for quite a while.

There’s much more, but as I said, I believe I’ve engaged you enough on this. We’re obviously in disagreement.

I’ve done some basic reading directed at ascertaining whether Duncan could have had a reasonable assumption relating to whether he been exposed to ebola.

But first, did he know he was or had been in an “area” which had active ebola?

Well, he was working in Monrovia proper, which is apparently about 5 square miles in extent.

Furthermore, and more precisely, he worked at Safeway Cargo on broad street; which appears to be about 600 yards, (less than half a mile, the length of my vacation farm field) from the West Point slum which the Government of Liberia had quarantined and where rioting had broken out on August 22.

Half a mile? I can see deer across the property for a good 3/4s of that half mile length.

“Mr. Brunson [of the company] said that Mr. Duncan quit abruptly on Sept. 4, giving no reason. ” NYT

So there is no doubt that Duncan knew he was living in the cockpit of the infection. And little doubt to my mind that soon after the quarantine riots took place half a mile from his place of employment, he was making serious plans to decamp.

Now the question remaining of course is whether Duncan could have had reason to suspect that he had himself been directly exposed to the disease.

And I think that not only the Los Angeles Times article, but the early October New York Times reports indicate that he had to have known if he placed any credence in medical directives whatsoever. This, since, unlike the unnamed “ebola treatment units” which various sources have reported Duncan and the Williamses were directed to, the NYT has rather more specific information.

At first we get the usual vagaries, which seem almost intentionally deflective.

“Turned away from a hospital for lack of space in its Ebola treatment ward, the family said it took Ms. Williams back home in the evening, and that she died hours later, around 3 a.m.

But lower in the article comes this passage, naming names and locales:

Ms. Williams’s family said they had no choice but to take her back home after being turned away from John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital, first at its maternity ward and then at its Ebola center.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/world/africa/ebola-victim-texas-thomas-eric-duncan.html

So now there is a cite to the “ebola treatment unit” which Duncan had been directed.

He was employed by a facility half a mile from where the quarantine riots were taking place. He had been handling and transporting a woman around who they were trying to get admitted into the JFK Hospital ebola unit.

They could not get her in there, and possibly failed in getting her into another. So they took her back a few miles along Tubman Boulevard to SKD Boulevard, which is apparently a local connector or loop road between Taubman Boulevard and Somalia Drive. And there she died some hours later.

He had to have known he had been in such an “area” and that he was now likely exposed to someone who had died after he and her parents had tried and failed to get her admitted to the JFK Hospital ebola treatment unit.

What’s left to wonder about concerning his state of mind or motivations?

“About the query on the questionnaire: “Have you taken part in a burial or funeral rites, or touched the body of someone who died in an area where there is ebola?” No one has alleged that he took part in her funeral. No one said he touched her body after she died. Why would he answer “yes” if those things are not true? “

I agree we are talking in circles here. I already alluded to the parsing issue, and the lack of a past perfect tense on the relevant question, and lack of the use of the term “corpse” as opposed to body. What do you touch when you touch the flesh of another living but ill person, but their body?

Was she recently deceased? Yes.

In addition the copula used is a disjunction “or”; not a conjunction “and”. However quasi-literate one might be they will usually understand the difference between the questions:

“Did you go to the park or out for ice cream” and “Did you go to the park and have ice cream?”

He therefore touched the body of a deathly ill woman in an “area”. i.e., Monrovia and environs, with ebola, just before she died.

News reports to which you referred us, also say that while doing so, he and his helpers were directed to ebola treatment units.

Your response to that point I take it, is that that particular point is an unsettled matter as to fact. Why it should be less settled or more suspect than any of the rest of the so-called facts reported, is unclear to me. If X is taken at face value in source Y, then what is the basis for discounting Z? Lack of specificity?

Whether he actually handled a corpse, and whether his “neighborhood”, whatever that means, is what is meant by an “area” is another matter.

There is no objective information on the first, and apparently you understand “area” to mean “neighborhood”, and “neighborhood”, to imply some particular cluster of dwellings, or a number of what we would normally call city blocks.

You will however I suppose, finally concede that the particular question does not stipulate only the handling of the “corpse” of someone who had died of ebola, but is more generally framed; and not just: “Have you handled the corpse of someone who has recently died of ebola?”

My personal opinion is that he had determined to get his ass out of Dodge earlier as the plague developed, and figured that he had recently been dragooned by his landlord into a seriously iffy situation; hoping of course that he had not.

We may find out more, one way or another, yet; if the reportage is not all put out by those who have a vested interest in the unstated political or moral implications readers will take away.

You’ve already persuaded me.

I don’t think the case is there to prove him malign… or too dumb to know what’s up.

Even though ebola was epidemic… Liberia has so MANY other diseases that her symptoms were lost in the noise until the last.

I can’t believe that her relatives would’ve conducted routine burial rites if they’d thought she had ebola.

The word was out already that such attempts were lethally dangerous.

The best explanation for the family’s behavior is that — even at the end — they STILL didn’t recognize ebola.

This is also proving to be a major problem for our professionals. Unlike the Black Death, ebola in its earliest manifestations is obviously being taken for everything BUT ebola.

This latter trait should have everyone’s hair on fire. We can’t spot ebola until it’s had plenty of time to spread to other candidates.

The authorities — everywhere — have to insist on a new protocol: face masks for anyone falling ill –and for those attending.

Further, such persons are highly discouraged to soldier on — going to work, school, etc.

The authorities need to have test methods and specialist responders so that ebola candidates are flagged as early as possible.

Because ebola is vulnerable outside the body, amazing results may be had by simply going anal retentive and cleaning every surface in sight — and the ventilation system.

We have to stop the impulse to head to the ER. They can’t help you. It IS a crackerjack way of spreading ebola far and wide, though.

Field response ought to be by EMTs — equipped with protection AND field test kits.

Since the latter don’t exist, there is work to be done.

{ DNA replicators used for forensics should be modified and mass produced so that EMTs can pull in the genetic signal — long before the candidate is fulsomely contagious. }

We need early detection protocols — yesterday.

&&&

We have to STOP permitting returnees from floating off into the general population. They need to spend time getting cleared by the above methods.

Obviously, this must mean that commercial flights have to stop — yesterday.

If we can confine ebola to Africa, at least someone will be alive to tackle the disease. If ebola cuts loose in Europe or America — all research figures to collapse.

At such a time, total panic will prevail, just like in Africa.

If you haven’t figured it out: the economies of west Africa have ALREADY come to a complete halt. No-one wants to shake hands anywhere.

Barry Soetoro’s ‘take’ on the situation — as always — is totally wrong.

Afflicting the First World with ebola will cause all attempts at a cure to crash. I give you the history of the Spanish flu and the Black Death.

All research into the Spanish flu was entirely abandoned. No laboratory would touch it. All eyes turned towards how to conduct quarantines. The infected were given strictly palliative care.

Barry actually thinks that he’s speeding up a cure.

Now that’s REALLY scary!

Malaria was never cured by bringing it to Washington DC. Get a clue.

Note my comment above—

The woman Duncan carried and who later died was apparently his neighborhood’s first ebola case.

That makes it even less likely that Duncan knew she had ebola. And less likely that anyone in the neighborhood knew it, until more people who’d been around her had died from it.

I feel as though I’m stating the same things over and over, and you’re not understanding. Not sure why.

I’m not going to keep going on and on with this, but I’ll make one more effort. And I’ll add a few details, as well.

He is being accused of lying. Lying presupposes you know something. I don’t think he knew Williams had died of ebola, nor do I think he was lying about anything in the questionnaire.

Am I certain? Of course not. So there’s a chance (I place it at perhaps 10% or less that he knew, and was lying).

There’s a huge difference between having some sort of reason to suspect, very slightly suspecting, actually suspecting, and actually knowing.

So, I’ve never denied he might (accept on the “might”) have reason to suspect—especially if he had better-than-average knowledge and awareness, as well as certain information that I don’t know whether he had but that I don’t think he had. But even with some of that knowledge and a mild suspicion that she had ebola, he could easily have rejected that suspicion and decided she didn’t have it, and that she had died of either malaria or a complication of pregnancy (such as eclampsia, for example). In particular, she apparently had received a diagnosis of malaria from a clinic staff member on the night she died, so he would have every reason to think she had had malaria, and if he’d had any small suspicion of ebola he would have been likely to have discarded it at that point.

So, in regard to the question of whether he is being wrongly vilified for lying, the most important thing to know is his state of mind when he was asked the question. The relevant question is: did he know, at the time he answered the question, that she had died of ebola? The answer can be “no,” even if at some earlier moment he might have had some suspicion that she had, a suspicion he had later discarded.
In Liberia, people die at a rate much higher than here. The rate of death from other things (such as malaria) is much higher than from ebola, actually (at least, as far as I can tell from the statistics I looked up). He was told she had malaria. I’ve already dealt with a lot of the other questions (such as their going to an ebola clinic in addition to hospitals in general, and what that may have meant, and what Duncan may have known about it) here, so there’s no reason to go into that all over again.

The unjust vilification in this case does not consist of people saying he might have lied. Of course he might have lied. It consists of people saying “he lied, of course he knew, he came here knowingly and selfishly and didn’t care who he infected,” and people saying “he got his ticket knowing he’d been exposed to ebola, in order to get treatment here, and he lied in order to get here.”

About the query on the questionnaire: “Have you taken part in a burial or funeral rites, or touched the body of someone who died in an area where there is ebola?” No one has alleged that he took part in her funeral. No one said he touched her body after she died. Why would he answer “yes” if those things are not true?

In a sense, all of Liberia is “an area where there is ebola.” The question makes no sense if everyone in Liberia who’s been to a funeral in the last half year must answer “yes” to it. At any rate, however, as I said, there’s not been a single allegation that Duncan went to her funeral or touched her corpse.

What’s more, it’s not at all clear how a person is supposed to interpret “area”—and that’s not nitpicking, that’s actually a very real and important question. Duncan lived in Paynesville, a Monrovia suburb—and in his neighborhood, Marthalene Williams (the pregnant woman he had helped carry) turns out to have been Duncan’s neighborhood’s very first case of ebola:

While Ms. Williams appears to have been the first patient in her area of the neighborhood, members of a local volunteer Ebola task force say they believe that the virus was brought in by an outsider. Ms. Williams rarely left home because of her pregnancy, they said. But a cousin who came to visit Ms. Williams later died of Ebola after apparently being infected by her mother, who is now in a Ebola treatment center, members of the task force said.
“That’s how Ebola came here,” said Mark Kpoto, 21, a task force member.

How was Duncan supposed to know that Williams had ebola if she was the first case in the area? Do you still think Duncan lied when he failed to check that box? He did not live in an “area” with Ebola, unless you consider all of Monrovia and Liberia to be such an area, and he had not been near her corpse, as far as we know.

Hindsight—yours—is 20/20. But Duncan did not have the benefit of that.

Hope that clears things up for you. I don’t know how to be any more clear than that. Unless new facts are uncovered that change any of this, I remain more convinced than ever that Duncan didn’t lie.

That form (the penmanship) sure makes it look like T.E.D. was used to filling out forms, and was quite literate.

It gives the general impression that he spent a fair amount of time in the office.

(I’ve seen countless shipping documents — and the typical driver has lousy handwriting — even check marks jump around the page.)

That’d be entirely consistent with his position handling international and domestic freight.

So I must now dismiss the ‘stupidity angle’ — unless someone else filled out his document. ( It happens. )

neo-neocon Says:
October 9th, 2014 at 2:04 pm

DNW:

Of course he had reason to suspect he’d been exposed. I’ve never denied that, and I don’t know why you would think that’s what I’m saying.”

Because you say that he was being vilified; and I take it for not being truthful, when the truth as you see it supported the proposition that he had no idea he might have been exposed to ebola.

I take it that your argument is that:

A. Neither Duncan nor the Williams family could have reasonably surmised that Ms Williams was dying or had died of ebola; even though the news reports to which you referred made reference to her dire condition and to the clinic where she was transfused, sending her off to an” ebola treatment unit”

1. You dispute that we can conclude she actually was directed to an ebola treatment unit

2. You dispute that the neighbors could have reason to suggest that the Williams family more or less knew prior to or shortly after Williams’ death.

B. You also seem to now believe that there is no significance to the fact that Duncan lied in writing in response to the form question ” Have you taken part in a burial or funeral rites, or touched the body of someone who died in an area where there is ebola” http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/10/03/1412293140277_wps_1_This_Oct_2_2014_photo_sho.jpg

But please note what it is the question actually asks: not, if he touched someone known to have ebola, but if he touched the body someone who died in an area where there is ebola.

Now I suppose one could argue about the grammar of the question, and whether it refers only to actual corpses; and then go on claim that Duncan had not touched her for several house before she actually expired … But certainly the phrasing of the question must have gotten his attention and required a certain amount of deviously self-serving parsing if he were to mentally respond, ” I never touched an ebola corpse” before checking off “No”.

Since of course he was in an area with ebola, and he had just recently handled the body of someone who had shortly thereafter died in an area with ebola. That being an area infested with ebola, one can conclude from the Liberian government’s own pronouncements quarantines, and acts, for – oh – about three months prior.

Now, if you are asking me what it is I think you are actually arguing, I, after having copied all of your comments and articles on the subject of Duncan, would have to say I am not sure. You views seem to have shifted over time.

However my view is quite plain. It is that Duncan is not being unjustly vilified. This, on the basis that in my view he could not possibly have been unaware that he was in an area with ebola; an area in which it was epidemic; a situation close to catastrophic; and that he had handled a woman who had just recently died in a area with ebola.

As far as assessing Duncan’s behavior according to what a rational or morally scrupulous actor would have done in his place had he concers for others of the kind you imagine, and then imputing those motives and assumptions to Duncan, with the aim of exculpating him on that basis; I think I’ll take a pass on that.

But how serious would any such suspicion have been, under the circumstances? Not very; he had much more reason to suspect she’d had malaria or died from her pregnancy. And that’s what he had been told, as well (and by some medical authorities.) Did he believe he’d been exposed? Not likely; almost no one else who was part of the same drama thought they’d been exposed either, and acted accordingly. Did he know he’d been exposed? Very very very unlikely.

The question to a Liberian isn’t: “is there any chance whatsoever that you might have been exposed?” because the answer would always have been yes. It is “have you been exposed?” His truthful answer–as far as he knew–almost certainly would have been no. If he’d been of a very analytical mind, and had been thinking very clearly, and had some small suspicion he’d been exposed (we don’t know whether he did or didn’t), he could have said “I think there’s a small chance.” That would have been a better response. But not saying it is no indication whatsoever that he was lying.

In a sign of how furiously the disease can spread, an ambulance had come to their house on Wednesday to pick up Sonny Boy. Another ambulance picked up a woman and her daughter from the same area, and a team of body collectors came to retrieve the body of yet another woman – all four appeared to have been infected in a chain reaction started by Marthalene Williams.

A few minutes after the ambulance left, the parents got a call telling them that Sonny Boy had died on the way to the hospital