” out of patience with these savage ingrates.”
No, you’ve got it wrong.
The Liberians are wonderful people, really. Many are strong Christians and don’t follow traditional rituals. Think about it. If someone in you family gets sick with Ebola the hospitals really aren’t equipped to handle them, what are you going to do? Western medicine can’t help those infected, so why should these people suddenly trust us in the midst of pandemic.
It isn’t the Liberian’s fault that the disease spreads even when symptoms are not present. They have been eating “bush meat” — such as deer — for thousands of years.
....”It isn’t the Liberian’s fault that the disease spreads”.....
Perhaps, but their culture style and basic mis-understanding about disease isn’t helping to contain it...even once it’s explained to them. Snatching away a body from a hospital setting, after your told of the dangers, isn’t exactly what most would call co-operation.
There are a lot of things that were done for thousands of years, but ended in the 20th century. Anti-Semitism used to be fashionable and attacking Jews was considered a past time, but now it’s considered racist and wrong.
At some point, you drop customs that don’t work because they are indeed backward and their eating bush-meat is what jump started yet another outbreak, which is spreading into a full blown pandemic spreading around the world. At what point are they going to learn?
Everyone is paying the price for their deliberate ignorance.