Ebola Spreading Rate Compared to Other Diseases
Many people are freaking out about ebola, but the fact is that there’s no reason to panic because it spreads too slowly. Way slower than other infectious diseases. The graphic above shows it clearly: While a measles patient can infect a maximum of 18 people on average, an ebola patient can only infect two.
That’s what basic R0 means—the “maximum number of people who can catch the disease from one sick person, on average, in an outbreak” when “everyone in the population is susceptible to the disease.” This is also known as reproduction number or R nought.