[phurley]

http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/facts.html

You are far more likely to be infected by malaria than ebola. Ebola is scary and makes for great news that draws lots of attention -- but it is largely sensational and not truthfully something you need to rationally fear, unless you work with infected individuals.

[dllthomas]

No. Based solely on rates in the past, rather than any sort of projection into the future, I'm incredibly unlikely to be likely to be infected by either (note from your link, that of the <2k/yr of malaria in the US we see "almost all in recent travelers").

If I am infected by either, I am overwhelmingly more likely to survive a bout of malaria.

And during an unusual outbreak (which is the case for ebola at present), looking simply at past incidence will underestimate my risk.

It's still probably not a high risk, and there are higher risks (which I try to pay more attention), but I don't think it's wrong to say it poses a greater threat to me (or to the overwhelming majority on this site) than does malaria.

[danieltillett]

Actually it is very difficult to place any risk estimate on ebola (or any other new viral strain) as we don’t really know much about it.

Imagine that it is 1918 again and someone was trying to make a prediction of the likelihood of influenza becoming a deadly pandemic that would kill 100 million people over the next 18 months. They would look at the past history of influenza and say there is a negligible risk of this happening. Of course now since we know that influenza can become very serious we keep our eyes on it, but for something like ebola we really know very little.

[nospecinterests]

Your chances of recovery from Malaria are far higher than recovering from Ebola. Malaria is more of a regional issue and does not necessarily have the ability to reach pandemic levels where Ebola, because of its communicability, does.

Edit: Though you are correct it is not necessarily something to be freaking-out over at the current moment. That said its a serious problem that we should not assume is benign. We should be working to contain it outside of the US.

[josephschmoe]

I've heard consistently that ebola is incapable of becoming a pandemic in first world countries. This is because it lacks the resiliency to survive outside of the human body for long periods of time.