[marvin]

People keep repeating this, but it isn't true. Ebola has an incubation period which can be longer than two weeks, and the disease can be transmitted during the incubation period. This is more than enough time to transmit the disease to more than one other person in a dense population.

The biggest reason we haven't seen larger-scale outbreaks of EVD/EHF is that previous outbreaks have been in geographically remote areas, and that doctors are stomping on it with full force whenever an outbreak occurs. The outbreak going on right now disproves the theory that Ebola just burns itself out quickly.

[Fomite]

Indeed. "Stochastic extinction and skilled epidemiologists and clinicians" are vastly more likely explanations than "It's just so good at killing people".

That explanation just has way better press.