How Sierra Leone’s 2014 Ebola Lockdown Was A Template For COVID Lockdowns

To be honest, I’d never much thought about the Ebola lockdowns in Sierra Leone and Liberia in 2014 and 2015. Within public health, the Sierra Leone and Liberia lockdowns were an early illustration of the fact that lockdowns were ineffective, but governments of developing nations sometimes do strange things; the idea that these lockdowns might have greater geopolitical significance never occurred to me.

This changed dramatically when I began studying social media activity about lockdowns before 2020. Prior to 2014, and from 2016 to 2019, there’s virtually no social media activity about lockdowns. However, this pattern changes abruptly during one specific period: The lockdowns in Sierra Leone and Liberia in 2014 and 2015. During this time period, millions of bot tweets suddenly appear, ceaselessly and relentlessly tweeting about “Ebola lockdown” in virtually identical language.

Sierra Leone’s first lockdown began on September 19, 2014. Immediately, on that day, a virtual stamp...