Are New Yorkers, who live in a more public transportation-reliant city, more at risk for Ebola than residents of a city like Dallas, a (comparatively) sprawling city with a more definitive car culture, where the first Ebola patient was diagnosed in the U.S.? Not necessarily, because of the manner in which Ebola is spread, says Dr. A. Scott Lea, an associate professor of infectious disease at UTMB, whose lab has been doing Ebola research for the last 10 years. That's mainly because Ebola is not airborne like the flu. With "influenza, the viral particles are able to exist in the air and are very contagious, and anyone who walks through the room [might] get that particular disease," Lea told HuffPost. "That is not known to occur with Ebola." How Ebola is transmitted is via contact with a symptomatic person's blood and bodily fluids, like vomit, feces or sweat. Theoretically, if you had an Ebola patient who was hemorrhaging and spraying the air with his or her droplets, yes, you could catch Ebola, Lea said. But the place where a scenario like that would happen would likely not be a public setting; that's something that happens, for instance, when you're intubating someone in an intensive care unit in a hospital, he said. In addition, when a person has Ebola, that person is typically knocked down -- it's not a case of the "walking wounded," Lea said. "With influenza, you may get sick and feel bad, but some people go to work and cough in the air. But this does not happen with Ebola — if you have Ebola, you're down," he said. Meanwhile, if someone is symptomatic with Ebola, he or she likely won't be "well enough to be on a subway in a hustle-bustle society like [New York City]."