http://time.com/3451161/the-good-news-about-ebola-in-america/
(перевод -- http://inosmi.ru/world/20141001/223365888.html )

Gerardo Chowell-Puente
Sept. 30, 2014

As a mathematical epidemiologist, I can tell you that... there is some good news in the Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa: Ebola is not spreading nearly as fast as some scourges of the past.
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But I learned then that Ebola isn’t the fastest-spreading disease in human history. That distinction goes to measles. In the era prior to 1963, when children were first routinely vaccinated, each case of measles created 17 new secondary cases, with transmission spreading like wildfire in schools, especially. It was lethal in 1 out of every 3 to 4 cases. At this rate, getting infected with measles during childhood was inevitable and so were deaths.

Of course, this reproductive rate isn’t the whole story of epidemics. Each case of the “Spanish Flu” — which caused the pandemic of 1918 to 1920 that many call the worst in recent history — produced between two and five additional victims. While that’s much lower than measles, Spanish Flu was still able to spread worldwide because of the speed at which it moved, also known as its generation interval. Only two to three days elapsed between the first case and a generation of secondary cases. In other words, it doesn’t take long for the flu virus to settle into a new host and a substantial number of transmissions can occur even before a person realizes that he or she has the flu.
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The good news is that Ebola has a lower reproductive rate than measles in the pre-vaccination days or the Spanish flu. Our 2004 work, which produced the first estimates for Ebola’s reproductive rate by using mathematical modeling and epidemiological data from the Central African outbreaks, found that each case of Ebola produced 1.3 to 1.8 secondary cases on average. This ongoing outbreak, a colleague and I recently found, has a reproductive rate that is about the same as the last one. It hasn’t become more transmissible in the more than 10 years it was lying low — and humankind has experience in dealing with it.

What’s more, the time that elapses between the first Ebola case and the generation of secondary cases is about two weeks. This should allow plenty of time to identify those who are sick and protect people who might come in contact with them. Individuals with Ebola are only contagious and able to transmit the virus when they are showing symptoms, which occurs about a week after they are first exposed to the virus.