Washington Post: Some good news about Ebola: It won’t spread nearly as fast as other epidemics
Gerardo Chowell-Puente, mathematical epidemiologist at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University

“As a mathematical epidemiologist, I can tell you there is some good news in the Ebola epidemic ravaging West Africa. This Ebola is not spreading nearly as fast as some scourges of the past. … Math and history show us that decisive efforts to isolate those who are infected with Ebola and to follow up quickly with the potential contacts of the infected can help control an epidemic. We’re lucky that we have such capacities in the United States; if Ebola were introduced here, it could not get much of a foothold. But our world is interconnected in ways it never was before, and diseases that require substantial contact to spread aren’t the only things circulating. If a virus such as Ebola can quickly flare out of control, consider the impacts of a novel strain of influenza” (9/29).