The strange behavior of an ebola victim:
Looking to get to the bottom of Sawyer’s strange ailment on the Asky Airline flight, which Sawyer transferred on in Togo, hospital officials say, he was tested for both malaria and HIV AIDS. However, when both tests came back negative, he was then asked whether he had made contact with any person with the Ebola Virus, to which Sawyer denied. Sawyer’s sister, Princess had died of the deadly virus on Monday, July 7, 2014 at theCatholic Hospital in Monrovia. On Friday, July 25, 2014, 18 days later, Sawyer died in Lagos.
“Upon being told he had Ebola, Mr. Sawyer went into a rage, denying and objecting to the opinion of the medical experts “He was so adamant and difficult that he took the tubes from his body and took off his pants and urinated on the health workers, forcing them to flee.”
The hospital would later report that it resisted immense pressure to let out Sawyer from its hospital against the insistence from some higher-ups and conference organizers that he had a key role to play at the ECOWAS convention in Calabar, the Cross River State capital.
So here’s my question. Was this merely an individual irresponsible in the first place, whose “undisciplined” behavior resulted in his contracting the disease, after which he simply lashed out in anger, wanting to take others with him? Or does the disease have a rabies-like component that in addition to its other horrific physical symptoms, drives the victim literally insane?
A third possibility: he was trying to bring an Ebola epidemic to America.
I see the irresponsibility, but failing to see the insanity. I’m sure he didn’t want the virus, denial is a coping mechanism, and I doubt he wanted to be treated there. Trying to get to the US for treatment seems rational even if irresponsible.
I think the most worrying bit is “against the insistence from some higher-ups and conference organizers that he had a key role to play at the ECOWAS convention in Calabar”
Had the ‘elite’ got their way he would have been released.
It’s the richer ones who can afford to travel and those who are connected that will flee the epidemic, bypass controls and therefore spread the disease. it’s not the poor who can’t afford to travel who will spread this.
We all remember the ‘bin laden’ jet that was allowed special permission to fly in US after 911. How many gulfstreams will be allowed to fly where their occupants want while the ordinary traveller is pokes and prodded in main airports?
Ebola can cause blood clots that can stop up blood vessels in the brain, resulting in unusual behavior. So, his behavior could be a side effect.
OTOH, if I were told I had ebola, I might be irrational, too…
It’s Africa. What further explanation is needed?
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,878698,00.html
I recall recently reading a story about similar behavior during a earlier outbreak: