When people look back on 2014, it may be best remembered as the year of Ebola. Two previous assumptions – that the virus was confined to remote regions of central Africa, and that the notorious virulence of the disease acted as a kind of self-limiting factor, with epidemics always burning themselves out after their initial flare-up – were shattered. Since its discovery in 1976, Ebola has been a curiosity in virology’s chamber of horrors, but in 2014 it well and truly arrived as a serious player in the global disease-threat league table.