[quote=doofrat]I actually read a book about Ebola long ago. I forget the title, but it went into the Ebola (and closely related virus like Marburg) outbreaks in Africa and the United States (Yes, there was an outbreak of Marburg in the US). In it’s present form, Ebola has a strange contagion profile that they didn’t understand back then, maybe there’s more info now, but it seemed to not be as contagious as you’d think. Even when gobs of the virus were around, it wasn’t always easy to catch. IMHO, I think the virus is more amenable to the living conditions in Africa where someone gets it and people don’t realize and hygienic conditions are a little more lax.[/quote]

There’s a book called The Hot Zone, not sure if that’s the one you’re thinking of but it might be. That book happened to dramatize real events (surprise, surprise) and faced criticism from real experts (details on that book’s Wikipedia article).

As to the original question, I think it’s about 80% hysteria. We definitely know a lot more now than we did in the earlier cases from ’89-’90. And I trust some of our government experts (I know, blech) when it comes to containment of it, at least as much as I trust anyone in the world. Ebola, dramatizations notwithstanding, is a seriously scary disease. The good (?) news is that the really deadly strains tend to kill the host before they can spread it too far.