I think they are trying very hard to avoid a panic because everyone with a cough or a sniffle is getting scared. But, if a carrier were to sneeze in my face in a grocery store, I could catch it, although I didn't hear about the 'passing a person' thing that you said above, so I stand corrected.

Anyway, Ebola is a bug that tends to burn out quickly, especially in small villages in Africa where travel is rough and villages are farther apart than, say, western towns and cities. Plus, the WHO and CDC have learned how to contain these outbreaks rather well in the past decade or so through quarantine. Also, with ebola, one problem when the first outbreaks occurred was that mourners would touch and lay themselves on the bodies of their loved ones and I think the agencies involved have educated people not to do that with this disease.