Worrying story...needs more "panic"

One of the historical claims that is rooted into our social DNA about the plague (which seems to come around about once of twice a millennium, long enough to forget about the last time) is this one.

The plague started in China and made its way west across Asia to the Black Sea by 1347. One theory is that a group of infected Tartars besieged a Genoese outpost on the coast. To harass the trapped townspeople, the Tartars used their catapults to hurl the dead bodies of their comrades over the town walls spreading the epidemic among the Genoese. The panicked inhabitants fled the scene by ship showing up in the ports of northern Italy and bringing the Black Death to Europe.

Or just this not quite as old an allegation.

... Captain Simeon Ecuyer had bought time by sending smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs to the Indians surrounding the fort -- an early example of biological warfare -- which started an epidemic among them. Amherst himself had encouraged this tactic in a letter to Ecuyer.

Public worry about Ebola just isn't World War Z-enough...so how about this claim?

Liberian officials fear Ebola could soon spread through the capital's largest slum after residents raided a quarantine center for suspected patients and took items including blood-stained sheets and mattresses.

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake]