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Another interesting field, which is my own, is cofactors, not only to the disease but also to transmission. I am still puzzled by the fact that you get more sexual transmission in some ethnic populations. One way to answer this is to look for genetic factors.

What perhaps should receive more attention is the effect of the treatment on the virus.

You see a virus very differently when it's caught and suspended on a slab of glass than when you're observing how it's ravaged a fellow human being.

People may have said that without symptoms, you can't transmit Ebola. I'm not sure about that being 100 percent true. There's a lot of variation with viruses.

Without an adequate response, an epidemic can develop into a pandemic, which generally means it has spread to more than one continent.

What seems to be clear to me is that after the primary infection most of the cells die indirectly, but at the later stage, when the viral load is very high, the virus kills a lot of cells directly.

A virus is not just DNA; a virus is also packaged up, covered over with a series of proteins in a nice, elegant, well-compacted form.

An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it.

Left to their own devices, epidemic diseases tend to follow the same basic process: A virus or bacteria infects a host, who typically becomes sick and in many cases dies. Along the way, the host infects others.

Just as the only reservoir for the typhus virus in nature is provided by man, so the only vector of infection is the louse. The bite of the louse is not virulent immediately after the infecting meal. It becomes so only towards the 7th day following infection.