Hell in the Hot Zone

This really is a tremendously good article illuminating many of the challenges posed by the Ebola outbreak. Among the points.

Determining that you've got a problem.

Determining specifically what that problem is, especially in an environment in which the threat may be confused with numerous other conditions.

Recognizing the severity of that problem.

Mobilizing resources to deal with it.

Communicating the severity to others, particularly a population that's highly illiterate, has virtually no scientific understanding, a considerable (and, given history, highly justifiable) distrust of outsiders. As well as deliberate or incidental disinformation arising from various concerns.

The impacts of cultural practices on a situation.

How poverty, crowding, and other conditions influence circumstances, particularly those of infectious disease. Both lack of and access to technology are contributing causes. Lack of resources, medical technology, isolation measures, and information generally contribute to the spread. But so do mechanized transportation (in highly crowded conditions in the case of buses, in rapid distribution in the form of aircraft), and just enough medical services to provide effective means of concentrating and distributing the virus. "Nature finds a way", as Jeff Goldblum's character in Jurassic Park noted, and what we've got here is the coevolution of a virus and a specific ecological niche such that the key fits. It's agnostic as to whether or not the specific pins it pushes are high-tech or low, and considering technology and modernity as unalloyed friends or foes is invalid.

And the counterintuitive dark patterns and responses which can emerge: the apparent success of early interventions in addressing the nascent epidemic, an apparent effect actually masking the conterproductive response of the local population shunning medical treatment and assistance out of fear, resulting in the hidden development and spread of the epidemic.