The death toll from malaria throughout history is orders and orders of magnitude beyond that of Ebola. I don't see how there is any way you can accurately describe it as "a far more dangerous pathogen."
Malaria kills more people than ebola (up to now) but cars kill twice as much as malaria does (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-re...). You could blame me for comparing deaths by cars with deaths by pathogens but let me explain.
Malaria and ebola can't be compared, malaria and cars can. Malaria and ebola are transmitted in very different way. You get malaria if you live in areas where some species of mosquitos carry the malaria plasmodium. This means that it doesn't get you if you don't enter one of those areas. You can't get malaria in NYC. You can be hit by a car there because cars are definitely endemic in NYC as they are in most of the world.
I'm worried by malaria. I don't like the side effects of it prophylaxis and I don't want to risk getting sick (the prophylaxis are not completely effective) so I don't travel in areas where it's endemic. I sincerely hope we can make a vaccine against it.
I'm also worried by cars as anybody else and I take the usual measures (watch left and right before crossing a street, drive carefully) but there are few places to hide, right?
I'm much more worried by ebola because if it gets big enough there will be little we can do to stop it: it's going to overcome quarantines and get to us in our cities across the oceans and it kills with 50% efficiency. If we want to think about something that could send the human population back to 3 billion in a few years we shouldn't look at malaria or cars, but at ebola. That's why also to me this is "a far more dangerous pathogen." Let's concentrate on ebola now, we'll get back to malaria when we'll have fixed it.
You are taking "dangerous" to mean "total number of people killed", while an equally reasonable definition is "likelikhood of dying if you contract it". It all depends on what criteria is being used to define "dangerous".
Absolutely. I'm using the word in the sense of a "public health hazard" rather than the "likelihood of not having a good time once you personally are infected" but there is a valid case for not wanting to contract either disease.
The Hemoraggic fevers are not likely ever to be considered similar to Malaria in objective risk. More likely to remain in the same league as Smallpox, which is still class 4.
