In case we missed the presumption, Brantly later went on to say God had saved him as "a direct answer to thousands and thousands of prayers". Far be it from me to deny people their right to thank Yahweh, Allah, Thor, Wotan, Enki, Gaia, Quetzalcoatl, Anubis or Kanye West for whatever joy wiggles its way into their life - but we do need to keep the silliness in perspective. If Brantly is so certain it was the hand of god that saved him, does it not strike you as a little distrustful he didn't stay in West Africa and sweat blood in a tent in the jungle? If God's on the job, why get air-lifted to one of America's best acute care hospitals, be treated with the experimental drug ZMAPP and soak up all that first class care from medical professionals who are experts in their field?

Show a little faith, man. On a superficial level, there's also the arrogance of Brantly assuming God deemed him more worthy of saving than the 1400 people who have succumbed to the disease already. I guess they didn't pray hard enough? This sort of egocentricity is implicit in the concept of a personal God, who takes time out from, say, strumming the strings of the cosmological constants to break Israel Folau's ankle to teach him a lesson about boozy weekends. Guess God was too busy on Saturday to make it to Eden Park, eh, Israel? On a deadly serious level, however, the idiocy and hypocrisy of a man like Brantly, schooled in scientific and medical facts, crediting the supernatural for his recovery is plain irresponsible, considering the widespread superstition and suspicion already hampering relief and containment efforts in West Africa.

Many communities battling Ebola are deeply suspicious of outsiders, others are resentful experimental drugs went first to Westerners like Brantly who were flown home for special treatment while Africans perished for lack of even basic medical supplies. Only last week, 17 Ebola patients vanished after a crowd of mostly young men stormed a Liberian quarantine center, shouting "there's no Ebola", proceeding to free the sick and loot the clinic. Closer to home, you don't need to go far to find high-profile believers more than happy to conflate their ridiculous personal certainty about how the world works with an understanding of medical science. Federal Minister for Employment, Eric Abetz, and NSW Christian Democratic Party MP, Fred Nile, have publicly linked breast cancer to women having abortions on the basis of their religious beliefs. While both have been roundly denounced in the media and scolded by the Australian Medical Association for peddling balderdash, Dr Brantly's "God saved my life" story has been dutifully reported as something approaching fact by most of the world's media, particularly in the US.

You can just imagine how the news will go down in Africa that the most well-known victim of Ebola has survived and credits, not medicine and hygiene, but God for his recovery. I can just see some exhausted Médecins Sans Frontières aid worker in Guinea shaking their head and muttering about the "commando d'évangalistés", then returning to the clinic where they're using science to save lives, not nonsense. God bless you, Dr Brantly. You can follow Sam on Twitter here. His email address is here.