Your etymology sounds suspect.
I've not wanted to really deal with vampires because the historical vampire is so very different of a creature from the Brom Stoker inspired sexual horror that has come to dominate our imagination. The historical Romanian terror was a disease spirit, and not the creature of rape and lust we've invented as more emblematic of our times. Also, the exact details varied across the Slavic world. In Romania for example, the vampire was so associated with moths that it was believed that if a moth flew across the body of a dying person, or worse landed on the body, that the body would arise as a vampire. For this reason, they were careful to screen the sick beds of the dying to keep moths away.
Since vampires were associated with pestilence, if a plague broke out in village, the elders would meet to try to figure out if it was being caused by a vampire. If a likely candidate was discovered, they'd go and dig up the body of the suspect and inspect it for signs of vampirism, such as lack of decay, fresh blood in the mouth, or hair and nails that had continued to grow after death. If signs that the body had become a vampire was discovered, they'd take steps like putting a stake through the heart, cut off the head and place it under the feet, and putting holy wafers in the mouth to ensure that the spirit of the vampire would be trapped. They'd then rebury the body. If the plague continued, they would sometimes take the step of digging up the body yet again and burning it as a last and sure manner of eliminating the threat, but as burning bodies with wood is extremely expensive this was a very rarely undertaken step.
I think there are parallels here between the washing of bodies in Africa and the spread of Ebola, and how this sort of superstition in Europe would likely have led to spreading rather than suppressing a plague in a village.
Exactly why the superstition about moths arose I have no idea, but I do no that Brom Stoker mistranslated a ton of words when researching Dracula, for example he thought Dracula meant 'evil' and the Romanian word for 'moth' meant 'bat'.
