WASHINGTON — How come nurses wearing protective gear can catch Ebola from a patient, but health officials keep saying you almost certainly won’t get it from someone sitting next to you on a plane?

First, the odds of an Ebola-infected seatmate in the U.S. remain tiny, even after a nurse coming down with the disease flew commercial across the Midwest.

Then there’s the extra screening that’s begun on airline passengers arriving from West Africa.

But even if you were to draw that unlucky spot next to a traveler with a yet-unknown infection, experts would consider you at little or no risk.

Here’s why:

Symptoms are the key

People infected with Ebola aren’t contagious until they start getting symptoms, such as fever, body aches or stomach pain.

But what if that guy on the plane is sick?

Even if a traveler is already feeling sick, Ebola germs don’t spread through the air the way flu does.

Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluid, such as getting an infected person’s blood or vomit into your eyes or through a cut in the skin.

What if a sick person’s wet sneeze hits your hand and then you absentmindedly rub your eyes? Could that do it?

Asked about such scenarios recently, Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, allowed that, theoretically, “it would not be impossible” to catch the virus that way. But it’s considered highly unlikely. No such case has been documented.

Medical personnel are a different story

As Ebola patients get sicker, they become more and more infectious.

The amount of virus in their bodily fluids climbs, and the disease progresses to projectile vomiting and extreme diarrhea, and sometimes bleeding.

All the while, hospital workers are drawing blood, inserting IVs, changing diapers, wiping up.

Doctors, nurses and family caretakers have suffered an especially heavy toll in the West African nations where Ebola is spreading out of control, and where there isn’t enough protective equipment or help.

Protective gear is tricky

Putting on a gown, gloves, hospital mask and clear face shield might not sound hard.

But once the equipment is contaminated, the steps for carefully removing each piece without infecting yourself are painstaking. It’s easy to slip up.

Spain’s health officials suspect the nurse in Madrid was infected after touching her gloved hand to her face while taking off her gear.

U.S. officials are still investigating what went wrong in Dallas. Frieden admitted that the CDC did too little to help the hospital train and protect its staff when they were confronted with the first Ebola case in the U.S.

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