[limpon]

Ebola is fairly difficult to spread, it is not very contagious, no matter what you might believe based on news reports. If you want to look at a contagious disease, look at flu. The 2009 flu pandemic lead to hospitalization of ~200,000 people in the US alone within a few weeks [1]. Talking about the flu, you can somewhat guess the number of infected people to be much much higher. The current Ebola outbreak lead to ~8,000 infected persons since its outbreak more than half a year ago in March. As you see, Ebola is not very contagious when compared to the flu. Yet flu pandemics are usually restricted fairly well once they take off and people are aware.

I'm constantly reading people being afraid of Ebola mutating to make people survive longer so the virus can spread better. Influenza (Flu) is very good with that, yet not even the very contagious flu was able to cause a significant thread to mankind in the recent history.

Ebola is the cause for a humanitarian crisis in West Africa and we should put all our efforts to helping the people who are affected by it, rather than worrying about ourselves for no good reason.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic

[steven2012]

Just because something's growth rate does reach the flu's growth rate doesn't mean that it's not contagious. The flu just happens to be extremely contagious. Ebola is still growing at an exponential rate, the rate just so happens to not be as steep as the flu's.

Even the CDC has predicted 1.4M people infected with Ebola in West Africa alone, at its current rate of increase. Who knows what the infection rate will be outside of West Africa. That doesn't sounds like something that is 'not very contagious'.

[limpon]

1. Ebola's rate of infection is ~1.5 - 2 new infections per infected persons [1] Even though this is an exponential rate, it does nowhere get near the rates of many other viruses. As such it is easier to restrict further infections than it is for most other infectious diseases.

2. The 1.4M people prediction from the CDS assumed no intervention or help from other countries and a collapse of the local healthcare systems. That's why I am saying that we should focus our efforts on helping the healthcare workers in West Africa.

> Who knows what the infection rate will be outside of West Africa Way lower than the rate in West Africa, that is for sure. Ebola doesn't spread through the air, you have to get in direct contact with body fluids. You don't get infected by sitting in a bus or plane with someone, who is infected. Most of the infected people are healthworkers in a setting without protective clothing, even gloves are rare to come by. Others are direct relatives who don't know much about ebola and who have burial rituals that are very different to the ones most of us are used to. It is very common in West Africa to wash out the mouth of dead persons and to kiss them goodbye. I am pretty sure this would not happen in the US or Europe, especially not if the deceased person died by bleeding out of all body openings.

A very large majority of ebola infected people in West Africa can't go to a hospital - there are no free beds at the moment. So they go back home to their families. THIS is how ebola spreads.

That's why we have to act, but not by panicking, but rather by sending well trained medical staff to help.

[1] http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1411100#t=article

[TeMPOraL]

Also note that Ebola has 65-90% fatality rate (depending on type), while the flu usually has < 0.1%. As long as Ebola maintains exponential growth, it is much, much more serious than flu.