The models were not wrong. People changed. The virus did not.

"On March 23, 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) was notified of an outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Guinea. On August 8, the WHO declared the epidemic to be a “public health emergency of international concern.”

"These data indicate that without drastic improvements in control measures, the numbers of cases of and deaths from EVD are expected to continue increasing from hundreds to thousands per week in the coming months."

This somewhat understated the situation. The R-naught factor was 2.0 which means a this rate it doubles every week. The Saturday morning WHO announcements read like a strict geometric progression in that summer and fall: 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000 and then 9000 by the second week of October 2014. The next (third) week in October wold have been 18,000 but it was not. By month end it was only 13,000. And then the virus slowly went away. No explanation was offered.

But the models were not wrong and if nothing had changed it would have unfolded differently than the way it did. With the figures above, had they kept going, then by the end of 2014 Africa would have fallen and since it was already on every other continent, the rest of the world would be infected by xmas 2015. But something happened. Thus was what the WHO communique in August said.

These are the most significant events:

"We've now seen several cases that don't have any symptoms at all, asymptomatic cases," said Anavaj Sakuntabhai who suggested the virus might be mutating.
29 January 2015 Last updated at 00:55
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31019097

Ebola Not Mutating, Scientists Say
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_152522.html

Remember these guys?





Well, now there's more people with immunity and look Ma, no vaccine! There are always... options.