Some scientists use the term “dead-end host,” as distinct from “reservoir host,” to describe humanity’s role in the lives and adventures of ebolaviruses. What the term implies is this: Outbreaks have been contained and terminated; in each situation the virus has come to a dead end, leaving no offspring. Not the virus in toto throughout its range, of course, but that lineage of virus, the one that has spilled over, betting everything on this gambit—it’s gone, kaput. It’s an evolutionary loser. It hasn’t caught hold to become an endemic disease within human populations. It hasn’t caused a huge
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Ebola: An evolutionary loser
