Wow... This thread is pretty damn amazing. I didn't make this link at all, but yep. I remember how "cultural practices" in W-Africa was almost a kind of lazy media catch-all to explain why people were doing things that endangered them during the Ebola outbreak.
My husband asked me about anthropologists and epidemic response today + I had this whole rant about how I heard a lot about "cultural practices" during the W African Ebola outbreak in 2014-2016 but haven't heard that AT ALL with respect to face covering/masking in COVID USA 2020.