You're comparing a fairly stable, relatively well understood danger with a rapidly growing, less well understood danger.

Elsewhere in this discussion, someone quotes a CDC estimate that by the end of the year the number of ebola cases could reach 100k to 1.4 million. Taking the lower end of the range, that's 100k new cases in 3 months, so the number of cases grows by a factor greater than 10 in 3 months.

Oy, look up the word "contagious", please.

This has the potential to make malaria look like a walk in the park.

In 2012, malaria caused an estimated 207 million clinical episodes, and 627,000 deaths.

Source: CDC.gov

> This has the potential to make malaria look like a walk in the park.

Based on what, really ? It may be exponential in some area but not in another with different climate conditions and genetic pool. We have NO IDEA at this stage.

And a random asteroid has the potential to totally like explode the planet and kill everyone. The difference is that I'm talking about present reality.

Since the Ebola outbreak is still growing exponentially, this also means that the death toll of the next three weeks alone will match the daily death toll of malaria, and if it continues to grow exponentially, Ebola will be killing more per day than malaria by around the end of the year.

This is missing the point. Ebola is a far more dangerous pathogen. I dont think this needs further explanation.

The death toll from malaria throughout history is orders and orders of magnitude beyond that of Ebola. I don't see how there is any way you can accurately describe it as "a far more dangerous pathogen."

Malaria kills more people than ebola (up to now) but cars kill twice as much as malaria does (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-re...). You could blame me for comparing deaths by cars with deaths by pathogens but let me explain.

Malaria and ebola can't be compared, malaria and cars can. Malaria and ebola are transmitted in very different way. You get malaria if you live in areas where some species of mosquitos carry the malaria plasmodium. This means that it doesn't get you if you don't enter one of those areas. You can't get malaria in NYC. You can be hit by a car there because cars are definitely endemic in NYC as they are in most of the world.

I'm worried by malaria. I don't like the side effects of it prophylaxis and I don't want to risk getting sick (the prophylaxis are not completely effective) so I don't travel in areas where it's endemic. I sincerely hope we can make a vaccine against it.

I'm also worried by cars as anybody else and I take the usual measures (watch left and right before crossing a street, drive carefully) but there are few places to hide, right?

I'm much more worried by ebola because if it gets big enough there will be little we can do to stop it: it's going to overcome quarantines and get to us in our cities across the oceans and it kills with 50% efficiency. If we want to think about something that could send the human population back to 3 billion in a few years we shouldn't look at malaria or cars, but at ebola. That's why also to me this is "a far more dangerous pathogen." Let's concentrate on ebola now, we'll get back to malaria when we'll have fixed it.

You are taking "dangerous" to mean "total number of people killed", while an equally reasonable definition is "likelikhood of dying if you contract it". It all depends on what criteria is being used to define "dangerous".

Absolutely. I'm using the word in the sense of a "public health hazard" rather than the "likelihood of not having a good time once you personally are infected" but there is a valid case for not wanting to contract either disease.

I think people find ebola more frightening. Even if it's caused a tiny amount of deaths compared to other, less frightening diseases.

This is true, but Its a Biosafety level 4 pathogen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level

So its "literally more dangerous".

That is because no approved treatment is available for ebola if zmap is effective it will be level 2 like malaria soon enough.

The Hemoraggic fevers are not likely ever to be considered similar to Malaria in objective risk. More likely to remain in the same league as Smallpox, which is still class 4.

And? I’m not sure what the point is. The effect on the affected countries is still disastrous. Do you think having to fight Ebola on top of Malaria is harmless?

Do you think it is worth considering whether a better response was and maybe still is possible to end this quickly (and be better prepared in the future)?

Malaria is a huge disaster. The Ebola epidemic is, too, in the affected countries. (I couldn’t care less about scared idiots in Europe and the US.) Both are.

Sure, the Ebola epidemic is still a disaster for public health in the affected places. Nobody is arguing otherwise.

But it's a bit strange to see all this American media FUD after years and years of not a word about all the destruction caused by malaria (apart from that Bill Gates project), no?