'The Ebola virus lives in the bats and does not make them sick. The Ebola virus is released from the bats from time to time and can infect monkeys, chimpanzees, and humans, and other wild animals.
So, can Ebola be caused by witchcraft or a curse, or any other cause? No. Remember: the Ebola virus lives in bats.
And remember: with the right information, and together with our health care workers, we can protect ourselves from Ebola."
This is not as strange as it seems, because Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote D'Ivoire and Nigeria all have social beliefs about the use of witchcraft to harm others, and some have laws to prevent the harm to people stigmatized and harmed by the belief that they are witches or caused harm through witchcraft. Ghana, on the eastern border of Cote d'Ivoire, for example, has witch and wizard camps for women and men, respectively, and these people never return to their villages and if they do, they are often killed. Nigeria has anti-witchcraft laws, which criminalize particular crimes against people stigmatized and harmed because they are believed to be witches or caused someone's illness or death. This is no small problem in West Africa.
Other radio messages warn listeners that if they are sick it is probably malaria and not Ebola, another spot cautions that if there is no fever, there is no Ebola.
Public risk communication is critical in a public health emergency and even in the United States, despite the Executive Order which identifies the Secretary of HHS as the official source of public health information in a public health emergency, it is very likely that the federalism lack of clarity will have any state initiating their own public health information which will lead to a mix of information. This lack of clarity in where government leadership and authority lies in a public health emergency will lead to problems in our own sophisticated western approach to risk communication and it should be clarified and practiced.
I'm curious about the legal implications for people who are lying to public health officials about who they've been in contact with. There are so many articles now about individuals with Ebola who are asked by world health investigators who they've been in contact with, and the investigators know they're lying. Also, some families apparently are hiding their sick loved ones in their houses because they're afraid the treatment center staff will kill them. The decisions of these people to lie and hide may result in many other deaths, but none of the articles have speculated on the legal implications for them. If someone who knew they had Ebola got on an airplane, I'd imagine they would face criminal charges for knowingly exposing people to a deadly disease. How is lying about your contacts any different?
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