I travel frequently. If Ebola goes airborne, the biggest thing you have to fear is not catching Ebola, it's global economic collapse and the attendant hardships that come with that.

Here's why. In Western societies, for the most part, we get the idea behind germs and airborne transmission of disease, so we can and will take radical steps to prevent transmission to the degree we can. We have better science, infrastructure, communications and (to a degree) a population with a better understanding of disease prevention (well maybe not the anti-vax crowd, but like the Shakers, that's a self-limiting population).

But one of the necessary radical steps needed may be to shut down virtually all international travel for a period of time ranging from weeks to months to allow the virus to "burn out" where it is strongest. That would be bad in the short term. Very bad.

Consider that just a few days of European air travel closure from the volcanic eruptions was enough to roil global markets. Now consider more than a regional shutdown of transport, imagine a nearly global shutdown. This would certainly push the world into a depression, or at least a severe recession. Interestingly, the United States, with our newfound energy independence, would likely not suffer as much as other places, if for some reason we had to cut off incoming oil tankers, but then again, it's not as hard to isolate a crew of an oil tanker as it is to isolate the passengers of an Airbus A340-600. In the United States, we are, for the most part, independent for the things we need (energy, food, water, beer) and highly dependent on China and other countries for the things we want (cheap electronics, clothing, Pokemon cards and so on).

I'm not worried about North America in all of this, I am worried about the 4th world - the parts of the world where young, uneducated, and underemployed people are accumulating in vast numbers without much in the way of economic prospects or political power. These are people who can (and are) easily swayed into violent means of attaining what feels like power and direction, and charismatic leaders emerge in crisis to leverage their cult of personality to attain their own vision of how the world should work - from IS to Boku Haram, the flavor of the 2000's is radical Islamists stepping in to provide what feels like social order, economic stability and, most of all, power to a powerless class.

Ebola may, along with wiping out thousands of people, wipe out the remains of the semblance of progress towards a pluralistic, secular democratic culture that had been attained in West Africa and the Middle East during the cold war and slightly beyond.

As an aside: remember that Iran was once pretty much like Austin Texas (OK, with a dictator running things...but....)

http://www.pagef30.com/2009/04/iran-in-1970s-before-islamic-revolution.html

So my concern isn't about the disease itself, I'm convinced that it can be contained to a great degree to the parts of the world where ignorance and fear allow it to thrive. I'm concerned about the socio-political effects of the disease and the tactics needed to contain it.