No you can't get #Ebola from a bowling ball

Dr. Craig Spencer returned to the U.S. after treating Ebola patients in Guinea while working at an Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital. He passed through the Ebola checkpoints at JFK airport because he felt fine and did not have a temperature. Last night, after several days back in the U.S., he went out for bowling, taking the subway and an Uber taxi. He felt faint during this outing, and then later woke up in the middle of the night with a 103^o temperature. He immediately took himself to Bellevue Hospital where he has been quarantined in a special isolation unit. Today it was announced that he tested positive for Ebola virus disease.

Is it possible to get Ebola from a bowling ball he touched the previous night?

No.

Here are the reasons why.

1) Although Dr. Spencer was slightly symptomatic ("feeling faint"), it is likely his viral levels were still quite low.
2) Unless he bled on the ball, the only bodily fluid that could be transferred was his sweat, which contains much less virus than the blood, urine, or feces.
3) Ebola virus cannot survive for long on a surface without moisture; compared to other viruses (e.g. flu) it is much less robust.
4) There is no way for virus (if any were present and alive) on the surface of the bowling ball to enter your body and proliferate unless you have a cut on the hand that touches the ball. Even then, it is likely to be a very limited "direct contact" because of the very low virus content on the ball and the small entry point (unless your cut is a gaping wound). If only a few viruses entered your body, it would be highly unlikely they could initiate a sustained infection before they were hunted down by your angry immune system.

When you add up (i.e. multiply the probabilities) all of these low probability events, you get a negligible possibility that is lower than the likelihood of being run over when you cross the street. That being said, one reasonable precaution would be for the bowling alley to wipe down all of the balls with alcohol (just like a reasonable precaution is to look both ways before you cross a street even with a walk signal and the streets are deserted).

This piece from Matthew Herper in which he interviews William Schaffner, chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and a top expert on infectious disease does a very good job of making these points.

Figure 1. No, you cannot get Ebola from a bowling ball.