The article misses the point on this research. You can have Ebola without having a fever (for up to roughly three weeks). The point is that the risk of infection through casual contact is quite low until fever appears, and normally for a couple days after fever appears, because virus levels are quite low early in the progression of the disease.
One warning they don't mention is that sexual contact involves more exposure for a much longer time than other contact with bodily fluids, and Ebola is contagious through sex both before it is contagious through normal contact and after for at least 90 days beyond apparent recovery from the disease.
Right. Infected and infectious are two different things.
However, there are grey areas here. Low risk of infection is not zero risk of infection. When dealing with a disease with a mortality rate of 50% or more, and such variable incubation times, “low risk” has a somewhat different meaning than if we were talking about initial stages of a low mortality disease.
Moreover, what if a low risk carrier comes into contact with a high risk (say, a compromised immune system) recipient? How many virons does it take to infect such a person?
There is a lot they are not mentioning about this disease. Supposedly a non-symptomatic nurse in Nigeria gave it to another patient. So no, even fever might not be the clue that you are contagious.
The article did not miss that at all.
Read more of the anecdotal cases in the news.
Somehow in up to 13 percent of cases the disease goes through even the final fatal stage...without a fever.