Malaria and Ebola are in different leagues in terms of perceived danger. Granted, hundreds of millions of people may contract malaria in a given year, but because we have treatments for it, the vast majority of people who can receive treatment will survive it. The majority of people who contract malaria are young children, not adults. Caring for someone with malaria does not put your life at risk. People who contract Ebola have, at best, a 50-50 chance of surviving, but in many cases, much worse odds, and anyone who tries to help you risks their own life.

The statistics in that book probably do not include this current, unfolding Ebola outbreak, which is the largest ever, by far.

The CDC just released the results of a computer model of the current Ebola outbreak. Applying a correction factor for the underreporting of cases, they estimate that as many as 1.4 million people may contract Ebola just in Sierra Leone and Liberia alone by the end of January 2015 if effective control measures are not implemented. If half of them die, that's a significant death toll--comparable to malaria's global death toll.