A new study analyzing the patterns of daily flights from infected West African countries, including Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, estimates there is an 18 percent chance that Ebola will arrive in the U.S. by late September.

Published in PLOS Currents: Outbreaks, the study claims that it’s only a matter of time before Ebola is transported through commercial flights to the U.S. as well as other African countries. “What is happening in West Africa is going to get here,” physicist Alessandro Vespignani, the senior author of the study, told NPR. “We can’t escape that at this point.”

This is certainly a bold take on the outbreak, since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has repeatedly told people in the U.S. that it’s highly unlikely for an outbreak to occur here. Even if the U.S. sees a few cases, it’s unlikely that an outbreak as severe as the one in West Africa could happen — due to higher sanitary standards, improved planning for preparation and protection, and the possibility of new experimental drugs here.

In the study, the researchers used the Global Epidemic and Mobility Model to simulate potential epidemic spread over the world. The authors wrote in their abstract:

The mobility model integrates daily airline passenger traffic worldwide and the disease model includes the community, hospital, and burial transmission dynamic. … The estimates obtained were used to generate a three-month ensemble forecast that provides quantitative estimates of the local transmission of Ebola virus disease in West Africa and the probability of international spread if the containment measures are not successful at curtailing the outbreak.

However, don’t let the report shock you; there are a lot of things out there that, statistically, are far more likely to kill you. In addition, the U.S. will be more prepared for any potential cases. Any infected Americans will immediately be placed into isolation and treated by health care workers in protective clothing.

Ebola traffic
This infographic from the PLOS Currents Outbreaks study shows the air traffic connections from West African countries to the rest of the world; Nigeria, being the most populous country in West Africa, is highly connected to other countries, especially Europe. PLOS Currents Outbreaks