The Hot Zone part 1 is about the Ebola Virus, a deadly virus that is highly contagious and kills 90% of people that contract it. There is no cure, and no vaccine for this deadly infectious virus. The only known source of the virus is Kitum Cave, on Mount Elgon in Africa, deep in the tall rain forest. The first known case is of Charles Monnet, a researcher living in Africa, he spreads it by getting on a plane and going to a hospital. There he infects a doctor named Dr. Musoke, who then gets a surgery and it fails to treat the deadly disease. 10 days later he miraculously recovers. Later on, a group of researchers go to Mount Elgon, to search Kitum Cave for any sign of the virus, but strangely none of the test animals had any trace of the virus.
One difference I found about the recent outbreaks and the outbreaks in the 70’s was that the contamination rate. In the 70’s the virus had a relatively infected a well amount of people but in 2014, the World Health Organization reported what they called a “rapidly evolving outbreak” of Ebola in West Africa, where 49 cases and 39 deaths had been recorded. Later on the numbers quadrupled and there were over 200 infected and 130 deaths. In part 2 of the book, Thomas Geisbert, an intern at USAMRIID, takes a slice of the spleen and takes it to a microscope. What he finds is Marburg, which he and many others had handled at Level 3. One final test is done, because while it is positive that it kills the monkeys, it is not known whether it is Marbug or something worse. When the sample meets its own kind, it will glow. The blood, upon coming in contact with Nurse Mayinga’s blood, glowed brightly. The monkeys were infected with Ebola. Geisbert shows his findings to his superiors, and it is decided that the monkeys must be killed, since is no vaccine or cure for Ebola, and it would be too dangerous to keep the monkeys. A similar thing I found between the two outbreaks was how Ebola traveled. In the book, it tells us how Charles Monnet traveled on a plane to go to a hospital and it gives us a sense how easily the virus was able to travel, when Monnet had puked in the plane and it would have infected someone in that plane then who knows where that/those person would have traveled to. It can be …show more content…
Three years after the outbreak in Reston, Richard Preston, the author of this book, travels to Kitum Cave to inspect it for himself. He does not break out with Ebola, nor does he find anything that would transfer Ebola. It leaves us with the question of whether Kitum Cave is dormant, and if one day, Ebola will revive, and a massive outbreak previously unknown will occur.
I believe that C.J. Peters should win the Nobel Prize, not just because of his work with Ebola, but his work with other diseases as well. He has made a great contribution to science with his detailed field studies of various deadly viruses. He has gotten little or no recognition for his efforts to prevent deadly pandemics from sweeping through the human race. He has put his life on the line many times to preserve the quality of life we enjoy, and should be shown our appreciation with the presentation of the Nobel
One difference I found about the recent outbreaks and the outbreaks in the 70’s was that the contamination rate. In the 70’s the virus had a relatively infected a well amount of people but in 2014, the World Health Organization reported what they called a “rapidly evolving outbreak” of Ebola in West Africa, where 49 cases and 39 deaths had been recorded. Later on the numbers quadrupled and there were over 200 infected and 130 deaths. In part 2 of the book, Thomas Geisbert, an intern at USAMRIID, takes a slice of the spleen and takes it to a microscope. What he finds is Marburg, which he and many others had handled at Level 3. One final test is done, because while it is positive that it kills the monkeys, it is not known whether it is Marbug or something worse. When the sample meets its own kind, it will glow. The blood, upon coming in contact with Nurse Mayinga’s blood, glowed brightly. The monkeys were infected with Ebola. Geisbert shows his findings to his superiors, and it is decided that the monkeys must be killed, since is no vaccine or cure for Ebola, and it would be too dangerous to keep the monkeys. A similar thing I found between the two outbreaks was how Ebola traveled. In the book, it tells us how Charles Monnet traveled on a plane to go to a hospital and it gives us a sense how easily the virus was able to travel, when Monnet had puked in the plane and it would have infected someone in that plane then who knows where that/those person would have traveled to. It can be …show more content…
Three years after the outbreak in Reston, Richard Preston, the author of this book, travels to Kitum Cave to inspect it for himself. He does not break out with Ebola, nor does he find anything that would transfer Ebola. It leaves us with the question of whether Kitum Cave is dormant, and if one day, Ebola will revive, and a massive outbreak previously unknown will occur.
I believe that C.J. Peters should win the Nobel Prize, not just because of his work with Ebola, but his work with other diseases as well. He has made a great contribution to science with his detailed field studies of various deadly viruses. He has gotten little or no recognition for his efforts to prevent deadly pandemics from sweeping through the human race. He has put his life on the line many times to preserve the quality of life we enjoy, and should be shown our appreciation with the presentation of the Nobel