> Ebola is just not a very scary disease.
Ebola is a frightening disease. On a psychological point, I feel like the shock of the symptoms itself is lessened due to the fact that most of the infected have dark skin. End-stage Ebola leads to the patient bleeding everywhere. Not only is the patient bleeding from obvious places like the eyes, nose, mouth, ears, penis, vagina, rectum, the whole body becomes covered with bloody petechiae (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasculitis#mediaviewer/File:Vas...). On lighter skin, the patient's agony is really apparent. Their bedsheets will be dripping with blood and their eyes swell up and turn a deep maroon color.
> Its incubation period is short and reliable, it doesn't become infectious until symptoms display,
Yep.
> it's not particularly infectious in the first place
I feel like that's a point that doesn't have nearly enough information. Previous outbreaks have generally been limited the virus burning its way through a small population before it can hit a major population center. Healthcare workers who are currently treating Ebola patients (who should know proper protocol), are being infected at a rate far higher than expected. (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/ebola/25-august-2014/en/)
> its transmission mechanisms are downright pedestrian
I'll grant you that transmission by fluid is generally fairly easy to contain. However, when the patient is draining all of their bodily fluids out onto the floor, cleaning and containment becomes far harder. Not only that, there have been several incidents (at least before this current Mar 2014 outbreak) of patients infecting health workers by coughing and aerosolizing blood droplets into the mouth, nose, and eyes of their caregivers.
> 90% of the first world can make themselves completely safe by googling "Ebola Safety"
I don't think it's that simple. Currently, the CDC holds training sessions for:
"Currently licensed by a recognized professional agency to provide clinical care in some jurisdiction (e.g., hold a medical license to provide care in a state in the United States) and have recent (current or within the past 2 years) relevant experience providing direct care to patients. Participants should be licensed medical doctors (MD, DO, MBBS degrees), licensed nurses (RN, BSN, LPN, etc.), or other licensed clinical care providers (e.g., paramedics, physician assistants, and other clinical providers)."
These training sessions solely concern biohazard safety and last for three full days. Given that the target audience has already has extensive medical training, three full days of lecture, procedure, equipment, and technical training seems far above and beyond what we should expect from a normal citizen. Let me also point out that even with training and equipment, healthcare providers are still getting sick. (http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/hcp/safety-training-course/inde...)
> The other 10% are homeless or hippies and will either get similarly informative pamphlets or are living in communes and won't infect the rest of us.
I don't even know where you get that 10% from. It's also facetious to state that people "living in communes" "won't infect the rest of us"...do people in communes live in outer space?
> And even if all of that fails, we have the industry to literally give every American a hazmat suit.
I'd like to see how you arrived at that conclusion.
> Ebola may become a crisis, but it will not become a pandemic.
I agree. Ebola may not become a pandemic, but it will still cause great suffering to a large amount of people. I'll also grant that until it becomes a real problem in western countries, no one will really make a move as generally, western pharma ignore diseases which don't hold the promise of profit (see schisto). However, there is a very real chance that we can help and reduce the spread of the suffering by taking violent action _now_.
This goes without saying, but the one thing that anybody can do is to donate to Doctors Without Borders or any other institution trying to quell the crisis.