The American (IIRC) doctor who just died of Ebola was reportedly near-manic about proper PPE, considered extraordinarily unlikely to have deliberately or inadvertantly screwed up and gotten exposed. Airborne exposure is being looked at as a possibility.
Not saying he didn't screw up. But they really don't think he did.
He didn't screw up with
standard hospital gear, (i.e. mask, gloves, eyeshields, paper smock) simply operating
in Africa that's a huge handicap. They do not have the niceties of basic plumbing, and tile/concrete/vinyl/linoleum floors that can be bleached and washed properly, or Ethylene Oxide autoclave systems./ Nor does he have the luxury of first-world educated staff alongside him. They screw up, re-use gear, forget themselves and pick their nose, and they touch him, sit next to him, or contaminate some surface once they've left the patient area, and perhaps that's how he caught it.
Nothing is going to happen in America with the patients transferred in the plastic tents, and everyone wearing full suits, and kept in negative pressure rooms with ozone/UV air handling systems, and high level CDC/USAMRID type protocols.
The regular old Flu kills hundreds, thousands times more people every year. (And it's mutating every year, randomly throwing the dice at getting more virulent and deadly each time...) People, even relatively hard-nosed logical ones suddenly lack a sense of scale and an understanding of statistics and orders of magnitude when they get emotionally invested.
Also, the risk/reward ratio of getting to understand and study Ebola further in a first world setting with the best tools has to be weighed in as well.
