When the Ebola Headline Hits: What I’m Actually Watching

By Aaron Asay, PA-C, DMSc

You saw the headline. Maybe it came up in your news feed this morning, or someone in a group chat sent it with a string of question marks. WHO has declared a public health emergency. JFK is screening flights from affected countries. And the question running through your head, whether you say it out loud or not, is: Is this going to be like COVID?

I understand that feeling. I’ve spent 25 years responding to outbreaks, disasters, and health crises, and I’ve watched what the first wave of media coverage does to people — it creates anxiety without context, and anxiety without context is where bad decisions get made. So let me give you what most of those headlines are leaving out.

What’s actually happening in 2026

WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern in May. Major US airports including JFK have begun screening travelers arriving from affected regions in the DRC. The outbreak is real, it is serious, and international responders are working on it.

The strain driving the 2026 outbreak is Bundibugyo virus — a distinct Ebola species from Zaire ebolavirus, which is the strain most people picture when they hear “Ebola.” That distinction matters more than it might seem. The vaccine you may have heard about — Ervebo, licensed in the US in 2019 — works against Zaire ebolavirus. It does not work against Bundibugyo. There is no licensed vaccine for Bundibugyo, no approved monoclonal antibody product, and no specific antiviral. The international response looks different this time, and understanding why helps you hold the news accurately rather than just anxiously.

Bundibugyo has caused two previous outbreaks: Uganda in 2007 and DRC in 2012. Neither received significant US media coverage, and neither crossed into the United States. That track record is relevant context for what you’re deciding to pay attention to right now.

What CDC is and isn’t saying

CDC currently assesses the risk to Americans as low. But the part most headlines skip is the next sentence: travel from an affected country is not by itself an epidemiologic risk factor.

That phrase is doing a lot of work. If a coworker traveled to the DRC last month, that travel alone doesn’t place you at risk. If your kid’s friend has a parent who just returned from an affected region, that also doesn’t create exposure. The Ebola transmission pathway is specific: direct contact with the body fluids of a symptomatic person, or with surfaces and objects contaminated by them. The groups who carry real exposure risk are healthcare workers, burial team members, laboratory workers, and household caregivers of sick patients — not casual contacts, not fellow plane passengers, not the neighbor whose cousin lives near Kinshasa.

Knowing this doesn’t mean you dismiss the outbreak. It means you hold an accurate model of what’s happening rather than a generalized one. There is a difference between “there is an active Ebola outbreak with real mortality” and “I am at risk of Ebola.” Both can exist at the same time. The first one is true. The second one, for most people reading this, isn’t.

Why “calm down, you’ll be fine” isn’t the answer

When people feel anxious about something like this, the worst thing a trusted source can do is wave it off. It tells the worried person that their feeling is wrong. It signals that you’re not engaging seriously with something real. And it sends them somewhere else to find answers — usually somewhere without clinical grounding.

I’ve seen this in disaster response. The communities that come through crises best are not the ones who weren’t scared. They’re the ones who had accurate information early and used it to make decisions. Fear plus facts is manageable. Fear without facts isn’t.

If the Ebola coverage is unsettling you this week, that’s not irrational. There’s a real outbreak. The vaccine that worked before doesn’t apply here. International response is more complicated because of it. All of that is true. What that feeling is telling you, if you’re willing to listen carefully, isn’t “panic.” It’s “pay attention.” And there’s something constructive to do with that.

What preparation actually looks like

When I work with families on emergency readiness, I start with the same question: what does your household do when the system doesn’t work?

That question applies whether the disruption is an active outbreak, a hurricane, a supply chain failure, or a routine illness that hits on a Sunday when urgent care is closed. The households that navigate disruptions best aren’t the ones who panicked when headlines got scary. They’re the ones who had already built a baseline: medications on hand, documentation in order, a clinical resource they trust.

Ebola doesn’t directly threaten most American households right now. What does threaten households — every week, quietly, without a news cycle behind it — is the absence of preparation for disruptions that are coming regardless of what’s happening in the DRC.

That’s what I think about when I see a headline like this. Not fear. Inventory.

If you want to build that baseline with clinical oversight from a team that takes this seriously, Jase Response is where we do that work. Appropriate medical preparation — before you need it.

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Aaron Asay, PA-C, DMSc, is a physician assistant with 25+ years of frontline emergency response experience, former firefighter and paramedic, military disaster rescue officer, and founder of Jase Response.