The threat of Ebola across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone in 2014 had been recognized about three months earlier when an unrelated outbreak began in an isolated village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that July, with markedly different impacts and outcomes. Contained by that November, the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo killed dozens of people, while the crisis in West Africa killed more than 11,000 during the two years before it was contained. The second outbreak had followed the course that seven earlier Ebola epidemics had taken — with from 100 to 200 cases, with transmissions outside their original areas rare, with perhaps 5 to 10 organizations responding, and lasting from two to four months.