As the stockbrokers say, past performance is no guarantee of future returns.
Someday, there will be more papers written about this outbreak, with a slightly different strain of Ebola, and they will change the field of peer-reviewed knowledge. Unfortunately, the lessons learned will be after the fact, unless people pay attention to what isn't working now.
While I understand your reticence to part with the peer-reviewed standard, it is much like fighting the current war using the last war's tactics. Sometimes that works, but often the outcome is not what was desired.
I work in an environment where accepted belief clashes with new data on an almost constant basis, where results depend on adapting to new information in real-time, and the differences in outcome can be significant in economic terms. A small failure can cost a million dollars or more, and thankfully, no lives hang in the balance.
The data is mounting that the accepted risk patterns and protocols are not taking some factor into account, and that is leading to unnecessary deaths, especially in the health care community.
There will be more deaths before those protocols are altered to match what the data would indicate is necessary to avoid and contain the disease.
It is easy to fall back on accepted scientific beliefs. Have the courage to recognize when those beliefs do not fit the data and you can be a better scientist. We study anomalies, after all.
The virus itself has not changed significantly. If anything, it is less fatal than other outbreaks. But the mode of transmission is the same, the course of disease is the same.
The difference here is that a “perfect storm” of unfortunate events have conspired to spread the virus. It had never been seen in that part of Africa before, so it was spreading for months before anyone figured out what it was. And during that time, it got into some fairly populated areas. There were a lot of cases by then, in countries that have inadequate health care systems and poor infrastructures due to the civil wars that went on for decades.
One good thing that may come of this is that drugs and vaccines might finally be tested—efficacy can only be tested by challenge with the disease, and there certainly are enough disease-challenged people right now.
I would like to write a grant proposal soon, to do my own study...