While there was some controversy regarding how COVID spreads in the early days (droplets vs aerosol, how many virions you needed to be exposed to to become infected, whether asymptomatic transmission was possible, etc.), most of the details were fairly well understood within a year after the pandemic started. Plus, we were already aware that coronaviruses are capable of spreading via the air and causing mass outbreaks [0], so even at the very beginning I doubt that many experts would have claimed that it was impossible for COVID-19 to cause a pandemic.
However, Ebola has been around for 50 years now [1], so we have a pretty good idea how it works. And every source that I've read says that it spreads exclusively through direct fluid contact with someone who is symptomatic [2] [3] [4] [5], and so does every other virus in the same family [6], so it seems almost impossible for Ebola to cause the same type of worldwide outbreak that COVID-19 did.
(I'm not claiming that Ebola will never spread to North America/Europe, or that an outbreak won't spread to and kill lots of people in Africa, just that it should spread much slower than COVID-19 and that it should be much easier to prevent its transmission.)
No one worth listening to is claiming that there will be a COVID-style pandemic. The concern here is the very high mortality rate. Granted the transmission rate is low, but in countries where facilities and health-care workers are scarce this disease is still capable of being a real problem.
A few thousand is nowhere close to pandemic but it's enough to give the virus many opportunities to evolve against its new environment.
On the plus side, most viruses become less deadly as they adapt to their host. COVID luckily did this, it seems. If Ebola does this it'll become like the flu, but we don't want yet another flu-level disease circulating.
This is a new strain without a vaccine and more people infected means higher risk of further mutation. When this thing gets more infectious and progresses slower ... if i were the WHO, id throw everything i got at this.
This is a ridiculous gripe. If you don't want to actually read, you can just assume the union of both possibilities, and absolutely nothing about the takeaway here changes unless you're literally in one of the Congos or the immediate surroundings, in which case you probabably know enough about the situation at hand to make the question moot.
While there was some controversy regarding how COVID spreads in the early days (droplets vs aerosol, how many virions you needed to be exposed to to become infected, whether asymptomatic transmission was possible, etc.), most of the details were fairly well understood within a year after the pandemic started. Plus, we were already aware that coronaviruses are capable of spreading via the air and causing mass outbreaks [0], so even at the very beginning I doubt that many experts would have claimed that it was impossible for COVID-19 to cause a pandemic.
However, Ebola has been around for 50 years now [1], so we have a pretty good idea how it works. And every source that I've read says that it spreads exclusively through direct fluid contact with someone who is symptomatic [2] [3] [4] [5], and so does every other virus in the same family [6], so it seems almost impossible for Ebola to cause the same type of worldwide outbreak that COVID-19 did.
(I'm not claiming that Ebola will never spread to North America/Europe, or that an outbreak won't spread to and kill lots of people in Africa, just that it should spread much slower than COVID-19 and that it should be much easier to prevent its transmission.)
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbrea...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola#History
[2]: https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/causes/index.html#heading-xkphh2xy...
[3]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ebola-disea...
[4]: https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2026/05/18/what-is-ebola-and-how-d...
[5]: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/ebo...
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filoviridae
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat
A few thousand is nowhere close to pandemic but it's enough to give the virus many opportunities to evolve against its new environment.
On the plus side, most viruses become less deadly as they adapt to their host. COVID luckily did this, it seems. If Ebola does this it'll become like the flu, but we don't want yet another flu-level disease circulating.
funded by the US government.
This is a ridiculous gripe. If you don't want to actually read, you can just assume the union of both possibilities, and absolutely nothing about the takeaway here changes unless you're literally in one of the Congos or the immediate surroundings, in which case you probabably know enough about the situation at hand to make the question moot.
Some people.