My guess is that it is in fact more contagious than what is being generally told. It can explain why so many healthcare workers are catching it for example. Like this norwegian doctor.. I bet she was extremely cautious, still down with Ebola.
To understand how this whole thing started and how Ebola spread to humans you need to search for "bush-meat" images (or rather not if you like animals). This is by far the largest Ebola outbreak and also the least deadly Ebola outbreak in history. That's because previous outbreaks were localized in small villages which were on the brink of civilization without means to spread easily. This time first infected person was a boy who was living near town.
Doctors don't even know which animal acts as "container" for Ebola. They presume it's the fruit bat. Ebola is believe to origin from the caves near the shores of Zambezi, great river of life. Bats infected primates (great apes), they infected humans. Also its believed in some cases bats directly infected humans. Boy or first human carrier, supposedly ate bat stew, popular dish in Africa. They are so fucking poor and lacks food so bad that they eat everything with a pulse. Even those who have food eat that shit as part of their tradition. That is why Ebola and other hemorrhagic fevers happen in Africa.
Those villages are in pretty bad shape as you can imagine and Ebola wiped them out, that is why it's believed Ebola's death rate is 90%. Right now we know that's not the case and that every other person survive the infection. That is because health and living conditions are better in slums. But those are still slums and worse than anything you can find in western world. In Nigeria, which is pretty crowded place and where conditions of life are poor there were just 2 deaths so far. That's because Nigeria is wealthiest nation in that part of Africa. Which leads us to conclusion:
EBOLA CAN'T SPREAD LIKE WILDFIRE IN DEVELOPED PARTS OF THE WORLD WHERE HYGIENE IS MUCH BETTER THAN IN AFRICAN CITIES!
Also death rate won't be nowhere near 50%. Elderly and chronically ill will probably die from it but many healthy people will survive.
Variola was and still is a boss. Ebola is nowhere near it.