Alarmist rumours and warnings are circulating across the Internet that claim victims of the Ebola virus have begun to rise from the dead in what is reminiscent of a zombie apocalypse.
Several factors have contributed to these false rumours, which seem to have originally surfaced when several reports came out of Liberia – a country which at the time of writing is currently tackling an outbreak of the Ebola virus – regarding two women who apparently “resurrected” after succumbing to the virus.
However the story, reported in the New Dawn Liberia, does not provide much in details or any quotes or interviews from anyone involved. Of course if such an event did occur it would very likely be down to an error by medical staff that presumed the victims had died when in fact they were still alive, which certainly presents a more feasible explanation that a zombie resurrection.
In fact the theory that this is the result of calling victims dead prematurely is given more credence by a third case where a 37 year old man was presumed to have died on the street of the virus, only to show signs of life several minutes after morgue staff arrived to transport him away. This story was reported by various tabloid newspapers, some of which claimed the man came to life as he was “prepared for burial” – perhaps a little bit of a misleading headline.
So ultimately what we’re seeing here is a case of some spurious journalism which seems to place a higher emphasis on attracting readers than accurately reporting what happened.
This hasn’t been helped by the inevitable surge of fake articles posing as satire which we have seen plenty of in the last year or so.
These sites exploit trending news stories by writing fake stories, calling them satirical, and then posting them with the clear intent of fooling a reader into making them believe it is real. Many of these satirical sites claim that Ebola victims are “rising from the dead” and even claim to show the face of one such victim – however this isn’t an Ebola victim at all. It is a character from the movie World War Z.
So no, Ebola victims are not rising from the dead.