“And, it’s not.”
You might be right Jim, as per the definition of “airborne”, however it’s misleading for the average Joe or Jane. The fact is it seems you can contract it through the air by droplets without touching the person.
That’s a really big deal. How far and to what extent are unknown. It’s going to depend on the temperature and relative humidity. It’s not going to be the same as Africa.
The law of gravity governs respiratory droplets, it's really not correct that the extent is unknown.
Look, CDC made (or were ordered to make) two fundamental errors in July in their guidance documents, failed to correct them when they were obviously wrong, blamed a nurse for following their incorrect guidance, and have since emitted a stream of confusing and contradictory information. I have been a consistent critic of their fundamental errors and the bad results that have flowed from them.
But droplets are droplets. They are well-understood and they behave as they do over a narrow range of time and space.
I have made the point you are making about a common-sense or common-man use of the term "airborne" as opposed to its technical meaning at least twenty times in lectures about this disease since August.
But common usage does not change physics or biology. Ebola has an R value = 2 because it is not airborne, and that is very unlikely to change. Environmental studies in Liberia, in Spain, and in Dallas, as well as DNA testing in the Emory biocontainment unit and in prior epidemics all make environmental surfaces a very, very unlikely source of transmission, unlike direct contamination of skin or garments, which is the major vector everywhere in the world.
The abysmal performance of CDC does not change the facts.