At last, a sense of serious urgency imbues the world's response to the Ebola crisis. On Sept. 18, by the largest vote in U.N. history, the Security Council adopted a unanimous resolution, co-sponsored by 130 countries, that declared Ebola a security threat to all nations.

As the Ebola epidemic in West Africa accelerates beyond the capacity to count its toll, an unprecedented escalation in global support is evident, led by U.S. President Barack Obama's call for U.S. military intervention. In what will amount to the largest humanitarian commitment since the American response to the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia, the White House announced late on Sept. 15 that an estimated 3,000 military personnel will deploy to the Ebola-ravaged West African nations, alongside a significant increase in civilian mobilization.

World, you still just don't get it. The Ebola epidemic that is raging across West Africa, killing more than half its victims, will not be conquered with principles of global solidarity and earnest appeals. It will not be stopped with dribbling funds, dozens of volunteer health workers, and barriers across national borders. And the current laboratory-confirmed tolls (3,944 cases, with 2,097 deaths) will soon rise exponentially.

Attention, World: You just don't get it.

You think there are magic bullets in some rich country's freezers that will instantly stop the relentless spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa? You think airport security guards in Los Angeles can look a traveler in the eyes and see infection, blocking that jet passenger's entry into La-la-land? You believe novelist Dan Brown's utterly absurd description of a World Health Organization that has a private C5-A military transport jet and disease SWAT team that can swoop into outbreaks, saving the world from contagion?

In every one of the dozens of bioterrorism meetings I have attended over the last three decades, experts have stated unequivocally that the worst-case outbreak scenario would be smallpox in the hands of bad guys. And the most alarming other microbial possibilities that follow? Well, anthrax was always somewhere in the top five.