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Comment by danieltillett | Hacker News Reader

The problem is a virus have a nasty habit of evolving - just because all the past ebola strains have had a particular property does not mean that any new strain will behave in the same way.

There does seem to be something about the strain in this latest outbreak that is different to past outbreaks.

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Do you similarly lose sleep over the idea of AIDS becoming airborne?

Don't waste your time worrying about such hypotheticals. If you want to worry for sport, there are better things to worry about.

The odds of any particular mutation are small. The odds of any mutation are high. The odds of a meaningful mutation, somewhere between the two. The fact that we're seeing more spread than usual is already some evidence that this strain has some relevant mutation - though I don't know enough to quantify how much evidence.

No I don’t worry about AIDS becoming airbone, but when you look at the historical record of pandemics they are much more a problem than would appear of first glance. Pandemics that wipe out 1/3 to 1/2 the population and that appear out of nowhere are far too common over the last 2500 years for us to be complacent.

For roughly 2300 or more of those years we didn't understand how diseases spread or how to treat/prevent them.

But that doesn't mean we humans are "safe". Knowledge is power but its not a vaccine.

That is a total overstatement/generalization.

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