"While it presents as a fever, you're also not particularly infectious in the early stages. Viral loading matters."I have seen nothing authoritative that backs up this assertion. Our estimates of everything about the epidemiology of this virus are based on rather limited data. The disease isn't spreading like wildfire in Monrovia based on "burial practices" alone; we're getting some new data on what happens when it gets loose in a densely populated urban area.
As for your other point: you're right that rural Africa has problems with education and fear, but it's foolish to think that we'd be substantially better. Look at the response to the (perfectly safe) return of the two infected people to Emory: people were protesting this move, spreading misinformation on social media, and otherwise being complete idiots. If we actually had Ebola circulating in the population of a major US city, I doubt the collective response would be particularly educated or rational.
I hesitate to call these sorts of arguments xenophobic, but there's definitely an element of the "ignorant other" at work in assumptions that the people of Africa are responding in some fundamentally different way than we'd see in any large population of fearful people. We have sophisticated hospitals and high standards of medical care, but crowds are crowds around the world.