A factor that could bring the WORLD together in one united effort!

Nah..... it'll simply be justification for finger-pointing and turning borders in to LITERAL IRON CURTAINS!

from infected people and or from their bodily fluids which means its ability to spread is limited which is why there have been relatively few deaths overall so providing they implement decent quarantine methods and maintain them for awhile the outbreak should dry up in a few weeks.
If and this is a huge if (and an unlikely one from what I have read) it should somehow find a way to go airborne then its a whole different story.

The major reason for the spread in Africa is poverty and culture.

Morocco. I know they are some distance away from these western countries, but it does make me nervous.

Things for first-worlders to consider:

Ebola doesn't spread quickly or easily because a) while the disease can have a 21-day incubation period, it is NOT communicable until actual noticeable symptoms develop (Fever, etc.) b) it is not airborne or easy to transmit from one person to another, and b) it is so virulent that most infected people die from it before they can infect many other people.

What is fueling the spread of the disease in West Africa is mostly ignorance among a largely uneducated and illiterate population about how the disease is spread and what's needed to contain it; fear of medical personnel, who many people think are causing the disease, and hence to be avoided or assaulted; and mistrust of their own governments, for a whole bunch of sensible reasons.

unless and until a mutation occurs to change it into something slightly worse

But Reston wasn't lethal to humans, though it wiped out a bunch of monkeys. If Ebola Zaire (what's going around West Africa) goes airborne, we're all fucked.

...it does so in a direction that will increase its capacity to survive and propagate. Killing host organisms too quickly is not in the evolutionary interest of the virus.

Most viral killers are at their most virulent shortly after they make the crossover from an animal host, to humans, and then it is because the new hosts have fewer resources to keep the virus in check. Generally, within a couple of generations, mutations appear that lower host mortality rates, not raise them. Its those first waves that are responsible for the vast majority of fatalities.

The ideal situation from the virus' standpoint is to keep the host alive longer, allowing it to transmit more of the virus material to other hosts.

It's a never-ending process.

biologically,
Bright

if it isn't already.

We are already seeing a lowered mortality rate from other outbreaks (90% to 60%).

Next step will be to make transmission to other hosts easier. Ebola Reston already figured out how to do that.

less virulent strains of a virus are "selected" over time. Eventually HIV will have a very low mortality rate and the same goes for Ebola. However, many people will die during that process

Reported in another recent diary here on DU that some aid workers have contracted the disease regardless of following all current protocols, so there is some speculation in the medical community that the attack vector of the disease may have changed. Fueling speculation and concerns, is that this strain 'only' has a 60-70% fatality rate, where past strains have been closer to 90%.

Regardless, the disease has many potential genetic attack vectors open to it that it could mutate to use at any time.

Ironically, there are several studies out there that have had some success in working towards a cure that will be effective in fighting this disease, but because in the past the disease has been limited to occurring in very poor countries, perhaps Big Pharm has not found it economically worth its while to spend the big $$ needed to bring these efforts to fruition. Again this has been linked to in another current diary here on DU. Have to run out but could look those links up later.

Ebola has taken months to accrue 700+ deaths.

Bird flu could do that in days.

Given how flus sweep around the planet every year, it'll be downright strange if we don't see a killer pandemic before too many years pass. Notably, to keep bioterrorists from learning too much, reporting on research into mutations of these strains, and research itself, are occasionally being quashed, so we can't really know how close many strains might be to becoming airborne and transmittable to humans.