In a similar way, you're vastly more likely to survive a car accident than to survive being struck by a large meteor. If you had a choice of being in a car accident or being hit by such a meteor, you'd be wise to pick the car accident. But, if the question is which should occupy more of your concern, it's obviously the risk of a car accident, since there's a statistically very meaningful chance that's going to be how you die, whereas there's almost no chance you'll be killed by a meteor.
A person who only gets behind the wheel sober, always wears his seat-belt, gets his car serviced regularly, and drives defensively, because he wants to reduce the risk of car accidents, is behaving rationally. A person who spends his time worrying about being hit by a meteor is not. Its similar with worrying about Ebola, unless you happen to spend time somewhere like Sierra Leone or Liberia. There's just no reason to consider it a big health risk when you're somewhere like America. It's a classic example of a risk that's hyped because it's spectacular, not because it the hype is statistically justified.
There's a wonderful book on this subject, from the 1990s, called "The Culture of Fear." It shows how people tend to greatly overestimate their risk from various spectacular or weird threats, like terrorism, plane crashes, Halloween candy poisonings, satanic cults, shark attacks, etc., while underestimating the real statistical risks, which are things like heart disease, common types of cancer, car accidents, slips and falls, firearms, etc.
For me, the classic illustration of this is a "survivalist" stockpiling goods and various firearms in a bunker "just in case"... yet this survivalist has an enormous beer gut and is smoking a cigarette. When he dies, it's almost certainly not going to be thanks to the zombies, or black helicopters, or race rioters, or nuclear attacks, or whatever else he was afraid of, but rather those health dangers he could so easily have controlled.
