The news today about Amber Joy Vinson's trip to Cleveland and back to Dallas after caring for Thomas Eric Duncan is another baffling aspect of the Ebola outbreak.

As a writer of fiction, I know no editor would tolerate such unmotivated, irrational behaviour—least of all in an educated, intelligent healthcare worker who should absolutely know better. I'd get my manuscript emailed back to me with blinding speed with orders to give my characters a plausible reason for being irrational. Or else.

Reality runs on looser rules than mass-market genre fiction. But I do see a bizarre pattern in cases' behaviour that seems to help spread Ebola.

First we had reports of MSF having to shut a clinic temporarily because local youths were throwing rocks and threatening to break in. Other reports became routine: suspected cases running away from care, families concealing cases, or cases catching taxis right across Liberia from the rural regions to Monrovia.

Well, what can you expect of uneducated, backward folks dealing with a scary new disease? Or so some educated, forward folks might say from a safe distance.

But think of other cases: Patrick Sawyer, a top civil servant, dragging himself onto a plane from Monrovia to Lagos. The exposed Nigerian who then drove to Port Harcourt and started a sub-outbreak. The Guinean student who got himself all the way to Dakar, Senegal before falling seriously ill.

Then we have Thomas Eric Duncan, perhaps not highly educated but still a smart and capable guy who knew what was going on in Monrovia and had been in physical contact with a likely Ebola case. Yet he lied on his exit form, and his relatives in Dallas sheltered him when they should have been phoning for an ambulance.

Now we have a skilled, highly educated healthcare worker among those who'd been in contact with Duncan; yet a few days later she'd blithely hopped a plane to Cleveland and back. What was she thinking?

And it's not just the cases themselves. With a lot of arm-waving, I might persuade my editor that this new disease creates an Ebola Derangement Field, dramatically reducing the reasoning powers of those around the patient.

So West African families shelter their cases instead of seeking help. The Liberian government quarantines the West Point slum, resulting in riots, chaos, and a boy's death. Airport staff and other passengers at Roberts International watch Patrick Sawyer, seriously ill, lying on the floor while he waits for his plane to Lagos. They do nothing. The staff at Texas Presbyterian go blank when Duncan presents with a fever and says "I'm from Liberia."

For that matter, why did the US authorities put on such a brave show of reassurance for day after embarrassing day as they staggered from one debacle to the next? And while tracking scores of HCWs who cared for Duncan, why did no one at Texas Presbyterian or CDC tell those people: "For God's sake, don't travel for the next 21 days."

I know—my editor still wouldn't buy it, even if I mumbled about some Ebola cases showing signs of mental confusion. But if there's no Ebola Derangement Field, I have absolutely no rational explanation for the behaviour of such cases.