Evidently Not

From a humanitarian impulse to be of assistance in a medical emergency, to the oblivious understanding that he had become a vector conveying a dread viral disease to other parts of the world from his native Liberia, Thomas Eric Duncan has made history of an unenviable variety. "We expect people to do the honourable thing", Binyah Kesselly, chairman of the board of directors of the Liberian Airport Authority said.

Thomas Eric Duncan, who is being treated for Ebola in Dallas, is shown at a wedding in Ghana in a 2011 photo provided by Wilmot Chayee. Photograph: Wilmot Chayee/AP

Perhaps one honourable thing was all that Mr. Duncan was capable of performing, shunting aside his moral and public responsibly when the opportunity presented to do the second honourable thing. Perhaps he was just tired of being honourable; responding to an medical emergency where he aided a young pregnant woman in dreadful distress was all he was capable of, and in most circumstances it would be more than enough to warrant him a medal of distinction.

Instead, he now has a worrisome medal of having transferred the dread Ebola virus from Liberia to the United States, coming into contact with a wide variety of people having no knowledge of his perilous state which could threaten their well-being in a way none might have been able to imagine. He, this neighbourly-helpful individual, had no wish for his travel plans to be delayed, so he preferred not to declare himself to have been health-compromised when he flew from Liberia to the U.S.

Planning to visit a member of his family. And when it became clear that Thomas Eric Duncan was indeed suffering from Ebola, and his extended family living in Dallas refused to accede to the order to confine themselves to their home until the incubation period for Ebola had passed, they too chose to deny reality and refused to honour that need. Requiring in response that an armed guard be posted to ensure they stayed put. Which wouldn't have been required if Mr. Duncan had stayed put.

Before he left Liberia for his trip to America, Mr. Duncan responded to aid his 1andlord's pregnant 19-year-old daughter who was experiencing stomach pains. The ambulance they were awaiting never arrived so Marthalene William's parents with Mr. Duncan's help lifted her into a taxi, with Mr. Duncan in the front seat taking the young, 7-month-pregnant woman to hospital where the crowded clinic was unable to accommodate her.

She died. In a matter of weeks everyone involved in aiding Marthalene was sick or dead.

Now, struggling for his life in a Dallas hospital, four members of his family remain confined to their home under armed guard, and authorities have made a prodigious effort to find the estimated 60 to 90 people Mr. Duncan may have come in contact with. Should Mr. Duncan survive his personal ordeal and return to his country, authorities there plan to prosecute him for lying about his health status when leaving the country.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, Dr Thomas Frieden, is confident US Ebola cases can be contained. Photograph: Tami Chappell/Reuters

As for his family members in Texas, the State health commissioner David Lakey explained the necessary measures taken in their quarantine: "We didn't have the confidence we would have been able to monitor them the way that we needed to", since they were "non-compliant" with the request to remain isolated. Not that local health personnel covered themselves in competent glory when Mr. Duncan first admitted himself to hospital, explaining where he'd come from and was sent home by a nurse with an antibiotic and told to rest.

Even lay people with no medical-health backgrounds know that antibiotics do nothing for viruses. Even the most dim-witted nurse must surely be aware of the health crisis ongoing in West Africa, and that Liberia is the area most impacted by Ebola? Evidently not. In the country that lauds itself as being the most capable of treating the virus should it ever gain a foothold there.

Don't all U.S. health professionals know that three thousand American military were dispatched to Africa to aid in the mission to halt the disease?

Evidently not.