Orlov on Ebloa. An interesting read.
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2014/10/ebola-and-five-stages-of-collapse.html
The incubation period is up to 3 weeks - it can be as little as 2 days, is my understanding. He's mispresenting that bit somewhat.
Nigeria managed to contain their initial import of the disease (and there will no doubt be further imports in approximate proportion to the caseload, with scope for a big spike if the affected states collapse as functional states), but the lengths they went to were extraordinary.
Both the US and Spain - the only two imports so far - failed to prevent their oh so superior health care facilities from transmitting the disease to workers in protective gear. The affluent nations are complacent, and that is the main threat there - as Nigeria clearly demonstrates you can contain with serious effort and lots of discipline.
Clearly it is too late to contain in the affected African nations, and the disease will probably have to burn itself out there. Best chance is to contain all imports of the disease elsewhere. On balance it seems there ought to be reasonable chances of success in most nations in that respect, though the scope for large problems is still present.
The nightmare scenario - and I think really quite credible - is bioterrorism attack using the disease (I can think of multiple simple scenarios where a single actor would likely be able to infect hundreds or potentially even thousands). It would be a very cheap and effective terrorist attack in the absence of an effective and mass produced vaccine or treatment. Orlov is quoting a 50% mortality rate, but I think that's wrong - the caseload is always higher as the mortality figures quoted by CDC necessarily lag the caseload (it takes time to die). Actual mortality, if I'm not mistaken, is more like 70%. In any event - it seems to me the main factor in the mortality rate is the quality of supportive treatment keeping the patient alive to give their immune system time to regroup. To that extent a mortality rate of up to 90% is probably perfectly credible during a mass outbreak where healthcare facilities are unable to deliver care to the infected. On the other hand, affluent nations (and even (Nigeria) have a pretty respectable track record of keeping patients alive with plenty of medical resource.
Past outbreaks of Ebola have been small enough for heavy concentration of medical resource (as is the case in import nations currently) and in isolated communities where it burns out.
Whether or not this disease is contained this time, the risks of such pandemics in general continues to rise with increasing population, increasing stress factors upon those populations, and increasing population density as people coalesce into cities. Personally though, I think a high mortality global pandemic somewhat of a sideshow in terms of our final destination, and one could even buy us more time as well as significantly cutting resource consumption and pollution (not just because of the direct mortality, but also the economic impacts).