Will the Ebola virus go airborne?

Experts say the possibility remains remote. Could Ebola go airborne? That’s the fear set off last week by a New York Times op-ed entitled “What We’re Afraid to Say about Ebola” from Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Although clinicians readily agree that the Ebola virus leaps from one person to the next via close contact with blood and other bodily fluids, Osterholm warned that the risk of airborne transmission is “real” and “until we consider it, the world will not be prepared to do what is necessary to end the epidemic.” But interviews with several infectious diseases experts reveal that whereas such a mutation — or more likely series of mutations — might physically be possible, it’s highly unlikely. In fact, there’s almost no historical precedent for any virus to change its basic mode of transmission so radically. “We have...