Originally Posted by
Redundant
Malaria is a parasite, not a virus. :P
The common flu, however, kills far more people every year.
There are very many viruses that are lethal and exist around the world. Ebola is just particularly interesting at the moment.
My bad, but my point that ebola isn't as dangerous as people make it sound still stands. There are many more destructive communicable diseases out there.
That being said, it's captvating the news because of a combination of things. One, the death rate is particularly high because of poor medical infrastructure. Two, because of that, and good ol' fashioned paranoia, quarantine has been less than successful up to this point, exasperating the problem. And three, like I mentioned before, nobody had worked on a vaccine or cure for ebola, so it looks like we're caught with our proverbial pants down.