[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.

[danieltillett]

The problem is a virus have a nasty habit of evolving - just because all the past ebola strains have had a particular property does not mean that any new strain will behave in the same way.

There does seem to be something about the strain in this latest outbreak that is different to past outbreaks.

[nospecinterests]

That would be the case if it were not for the fact that it is really good at surviving in the human body.... until the person is dead or until they have developed antibodies to fight it. Some people do survive Ebola (aka the plague or the black plague). But not many. Ebola spreads, and fast at that, in areas where there are high population densities, areas where people are in close contact (areas like NYC). Because of the symptoms, it is possible that someone may be infected, spreading the disease, but think they have the flu or some other common ailment. That is the reason why the hospital in the original article didn't take chances and put the person in involuntary quarantine (the article didn't say it but I can guarantee that is the case (and the patient may not know it because if you had Ebola you would have to be insane to decline care)). The only effective way to fight Ebola is quarantine. You section off an area, don't let anyone in or out, and wait out the sickness until it runs it course. After that you safely and securely destroy everything.