Why the Ebola outbreak in Africa should concern us all:

[Warren DeMontague]

11. Ebola is scary shit, no question. However, AFAIUI it belongs to a unique family of viruses which

May not be as well-equipped to rapidly mutate in humans, as other families of viruses can. For instance, the flu virus is inherently programmed to not just regularly mutate or change its protein shell, but also to exchange genetic material with other flu family viruses- this contributes to the rapidly changing nature of flu strains, of which a number are in the wild, circulating between birds, pigs, humans and other animals, and often with multiple different strains infecting the same host at the same time and having the opportunity to swap genes.

Ebola, otoh, is in a pretty linear situation with regards to human hosts... There is little likelihood of it getting funky and interacting with other strains of something to create some hybrid.

That said, it's scary shit and it deserves global attention to stop it ASAP, and hopefully develop a vaccine in the near future.