Just imagine an outbreak in a big city homeless population. And then the explosive spread
They have eyes but cannot see. Nowhere. Never has Ebola exploded. Even in the largest outbreak to date which did include densely populated cities, the disease spreads slowly. Maybe 10 cases/day/country and at it's worst, still nothing remarkable. There were <30,000 cases over three years which accounted for <7000 deaths in West Africa.
We frequently kill more than the total number of cases of Ebola in West Africa in a single year in this country alone just due to influenza. Given the immense differences in our ability to provide supportive care even 20%-30% mortality would be very unlikely as demonstrated by the people who have survived Ebola after being evacuated to modern health care systems. No nosocomial infections that I know of resulted from health care in modern countries.
Ebola is not a fast moving disease. It requires direct physical contact to be transmitted. Probably the stupidest thing we could do is to allow it to persist and spend more time in more African bodies giving it the opportunity to evolve to life inside humans and become more efficient at infecting humans. There is at least one variant of Ebola which is apparently capable of airborne transmission, but which does not seem to be pathogenic to humans. The let 'em die over there attitude will hasten the day when (not if) Ebola coexists with another variant of Ebola or closely related virus in a single body whether simian or human, and that is the best way we know thus far of bumping the virus down the evolutionary road.
