People ignore the handrails, door handles, elevator buttons, and myriad other mutual and public contact surfaces the virus can be transmitted to--and from. From there, a scratch, rub your eye, touch your mouth, and you are infected.
The chief reason Ebola hasn't made it to the first world is geography. The reservoir species don't live here.
There, the infection may be attributed to transmission by contact with the body during funerals, but here, the infection may be passed on otherwise--something which could be masked by the funerary procedures there.
With a variable incubation period (2 to 21 days) attribution is something that may be a wee bit harder to nail down.
So, next time you use a handrail, watch to see if the person in front of you wiped sweat off their brow before touching it...because that is the level of awareness you will need to avoid it if it gets loose here, and even that is no guarantee.
Viruses that spread by direct contact with secretions and are not transmitted via a pneumonic vector do not become epidemic but remain endemic. Despite all the fears HIV remained confined to homosexual men, iv drug abusers and women who had sex with infected men or gave birth after being infected. Usually these viruses do not widely affect first world countries with good hygiene that experience a freezing winter. However there are pockets in first world countries of humans concentration that mimic African living conditions and practices. For instance the refugee centers in the southwest have close quarters and very poor hygeine in a very warm environment.There are similar refugee centers in Europe. So far there is no evidence that ebola has infected any of those centers.
If we get Ebola here. I’m staying home for about a year.