It’s not airborne. It’s a contact disease. He touches something... you touch something... you touch your face... you die.
True on it not being airborne but that statement is not “exactly” correct either. FWIU, you have to be in direct contact with the infected person’s (or an infected animal’s) blood, bodily secretions (sweat), organs or other bodily fluids (urine, vomit, fecal matter), and by indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids. The virus is spread through such direct contact, with infection resulting from direct contact through broken skin or mucous membranes.
So you could, in “theory” (not that I’m about to test the accuracy of this anytime soon) touch something that someone infected with Ebola just touched and not become infected yourself unless what you touched very recently had their bodily fluids on it. But say you pick up a cloth an infected person was just using to mop up his sweat and then you touch it and (blech) used it to wipe your own face or blow your nose on and or you cleaned up their bodily fluids or came in contact with bloody clothes from someone with Ebola who is hemorrhaging, and you do and you also have a cut or abrasion on your hand – bam! You’ve got it.
Since it is not an airborne virus (at least not that we know of, or so far and the type of virus it is, is not likely to become an airborne strain) you could (again in theory) sit on a plane right next to someone who has it and not become infected yourself. But OTHO, if the passenger throws up on you, you might in big trouble.
Most cases of Ebola transmission occur between close family members while they are caring for sick relatives at home or during funerary rites in that part of the world, especially in rural areas where family members ritually wash the body of the just deceased and prepare the body themselves for burial and then handle, absent any sort of precautions, the soiled bedclothes and clothing of the victims. The other cases are typically and for obvious reasons, healthcare workers, although sometimes those transmissions occur because of poor infection control measures especially in that part of the world.
The good news is that Ebola, while highly infectious, it is not highly transmittable through “casual contact”, i.e. merely sitting next to or walking past someone who is infected. And if anyone came into the US with Ebola, once it was discovered and the people they came in contact with identified, and isolated and quarantined, there is not likely to be a massive outbreak with thousands or millions dead because of how the disease is transmitted. Think of HIV/AIDS – this is also transmitted through bodily fluids but you won’t get HIV/AIDS by coming into casual contact with an infected person. OK – Ebola is probably more transmittable than HIV/AIDS but you perhaps can see the parallel. OTHO, I sure would be more than a little “concerned” to find out a food handler at the restaurant I recently dined at was found to have Ebola.
But truthfully I am more concerned about the reemergence of a pandemic influenza virus like the one we saw in 1918-1919 and the reemergence of Polio.
The bad news is Ebola has a very high mortality rate, there is no vaccine, no effective anti-viral and the care for those who do contract it is only palliative, meaning doctors can give fluids to help the person from dying from dehydration but that’s about it – either you die from it (60% in this outbreak but up to 90% of those infected in other outbreaks) or you don’t.