The Ebola post

Naturally, many health journalists around the world right now are focused on Ebola. What is it, how deadly is it, how easy is it to spread, and what do we really have on our hands with this unprecedented West African outbreak?

If you do a quick Google search, you'll find various answers to all of those questions. Since the NIH and CDC note that doctors and researchers aren't even 100 percent sure how Ebola is spread (though they're pretty sure it's by coming in direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person), it's not surprising that so many questions remain unanswered.

Nature seems to do a thorough job of answering some of these questions and trying to calm the hysteria that has spread around the world even faster than the disease (which is still limited to West Africa at the moment, as far as I know).

And Vox attempts to answer the question of what would happen if Ebola made its way to the U.S.

Ebola is not something I've ever studied or read much about, so it's a little hard for me to judge how nervous anyone should actually be about this.

One thing I do know, though, is that this emergency is a reminder of how vulnerable developing countries are to diseases like Ebola, and of the amount of work - practical, financial, emotional - that we in the U.S. and other developed countries still need to do to understand the context and support these countries in fighting them. And not just when there's a threat to our own health.