Diseases come and diseases go; I can still remember the time my parents were so scared by the swine flu outburst. My sister and I got vaccines immediately when to be perfectly honest, I hadn’t even known the swine flu existed at the time.

Today, it’s almost completely different and almost completely the same. The disease ‘ebola virus’ has swept headlines with its drastic outburst and lethal effects; but the panic across this nation, the United States of America, is different. And there’s a reason for it.

Ebola is not your average Joe disease. Once caught through the direct contact of an infected’s blood or bodily fluids, you suffer from heavy internal bleeding. This epidemic, the greatest panic perhaps of the early millennium, originated in the poverty-stricken states of West Africa. Thousands of workers have volunteered and have been sent to treat those affirmed with the disease and those who are under suspicion. And of the latest reports of October, at least 5,000 people have perished to the malady.

How did this happen in the first place, you ask? I’m sure science can give a more accurate description, but simplified it is population. This earth is literally crawling with the life form Homo sapiens, and with that increasingly difficult crunch, it’s inevitable we’re going to encounter biological problems beyond greatly increased mortgage. In fact, it’s expected—and it’s only because communication is so globally able that we have been able to greatly minimize the damage that could have been so much worse. It’s actually a good thing the fear was recognized so quickly, and how serious quarantines are taken.

Now, for the second question: where did this fear come from? It’s another population effect: in fact, we are more like dominoes than anything. As I type this wonderful little column at 8:54pm, I actually happen to be rather sick.  And I know I got this virus from school: even the pristine, newly updated model of my high school cannot separate robust high schoolers from sharing the love of sickness. And that’s just the school environment—how you ever considered how many other places you brush against other people, sharing and exchanging thousands of germs as you inhale and exhale? Work? The gym? The mall?

With the U.S., it goes further. Even though it’s actually the third most populated nation in the world, things spread like wildfire. Trends, words, ideas, social networks…diseases. And it gets worse: it has been cited if a sufficient amount of people came into the States with ebola (undetected) and infected enough people here, then the rate of planes coming in and out of the U.S. every day would plague the whole world within a month. The whole world! That’s the many nations in North America, South America, Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia…oh, it goes on. The chances of you and I, reading this, would not get infected, or even survive an infection, seem so slim it’s stunning. And that’s not even considering our loved ones, our friends and family.

So that sums up the terror of ebola rather frankly—it’s practically unstoppable, still squirming under the gloved hand of our valiant workers trying to slow down the race. The world is just too crowded and cramped for a virus with such devastating effects, despite how it has been shown it actually is an illness that is hard to catch.

And even if ebola does not survive to become as a severe population constriction, history will survive it. It will forever remember the fear people felt to that one simple, five-letter word.