Ebola In The Hot Zone

Historically Ebola has had a serious impact on human health and hygiene and still does due to the fact of no vaccine or treatment being discovered, but thanks to improvements in scientific and medical knowledge the virus itself is now controllable.

Richard Preston’s novel The Hot Zone, was based on a true story about the origins and incidents involving viral hemorrhagic fevers, mainly the Ebola and Marburg viruses. It primarily focuses on the Ebola virus’ first documented outbreak during the 1980s. As you read The Hot Zone, you will notice that it has been divided into four individual segments. The first segment looks into the history of filoviruses, and how AIDS emerged. The novel begins with Charles Monet, an elderly man who travels to Kitum Cave in Kenya. After coming in contact with an odd liquid substance, he begins to experience symptoms of the Marburg Virus (abbreviated as “MARV”), which includes; headaches, backaches, internal organs failing, and excessive bleeding. Monet travels to the Nairobi Hospital and ends up infecting the young Doctor that treated him. Years after Monet’s passing, a young pathologist named Nancy Jaax is introduced. Her story was told in her point of view as she describes the Introduction to Viruses, Biosafety Levels, and

In his book The Hot Zone, Richard Preston accounts the journey of the hemorrhagic fevers from their first modern appearances in 1967 to 1993. Preston follows twelve characters along their journey working with or against Ebola. “Charles Monet” was a Frenchman who explored Kitum Cave on New Years eve 1980 and violently dies of Marburg 2 days later. He is the first case since the original outbreak in Germany in 1967, which was believed to be caused by the shipment of monkeys from West Africa. LTC Nancy Jaax was an Army veterinary pathologist who begins working with the Ebola virus in 1983, and then becomes chief of Pathology at USAMRIID in 1989, as such she is heavily involved in the Reston monkey house disaster. COL Jerry Jaax, husband to Nancy was chief of the veterinary division as USAMRIID. He also lead the SWAT team that took over the Reston monkey house. “Peter Cardinal” was a Danish boy who died of Marburg in 1987 after visiting Kitum Cave. Eugene Johnson was a civilian virus hunter, specializing in Ebola. In 1988 he lead an Army expedition to Kitum Cave following the death of “Peter Cardinal”. Dan Dalgard was lead veterinarian at the

There has been an acute worry roaming about the United States concerning the Ebola Outbreak. Originally, Ebola had never touched the United States until September of 2014. (4) The disease was originated from and named after a river in the Democratic of Congo. Since discovered, there have been known cases in Africa. There have been many very deadly cases of Ebola - the fatality rate is estimated to from about fifty to ninety percent. (2) To the United States, there had never been any worry about the disease until September twentieth of 2014. A man by the name of Thomas Eric Duncan boarded flight 822 from Liberia to Dallas, Texas. Flight 822 was where it all began. Nobody had any

In 2014 the United States was hit with a force far more deadly and dangerous than many threats received. The ebola virus took the world by storm after it was carried to the United States and spread by people who had visited West Africa. This virus was all the more deadly as it often took hours for any symptoms to occur. In this time the Center for Disease Control spent much time and many resources looking for answers to the many questions they had. Under the time constraint and scrutinizing public, they had to determine what ebola was, what it did and its effects on the general public.

The average fatality rate of patients infected with Ebola is around 50% according to the World Health Organization. The nonfiction book titled The Hot Zone by Richard Preston takes readers through true events pertaining to an outbreak of Ebola in the late 1980’s at a monkey testing facility in Reston, Virginia. The author heavily emphasizes the danger surrounding ignorance and uncertainty in regard to the viral and morbid Ebola at the conclusion of the book. While Preston makes this point evident countless times, three particular quotes give a clear example of Preston’s intention.

The Hot Zone, written by Richard Preston is the true and dramatic story of the outbreaks of the frightening, unknown and incurable filoviruses; Marburg, Ebola Zaire, Ebola Sudan and Ebola Reston. This book covers the first documented outbreak of the virus and continues to cover more outbreaks over the course of 23 years. These sisters viruses are highly infective and destroyed entire communities throughout Africa with the deaths of 50- 90% of their victims. The effects are similar and horrifying with the viruses penetrating every tissue and organ in the body of a person, primate or other animal. This book takes place in the late 1980s and is based on an outbreak of Ebola in a monkey house in the quaint town of Reston, Virginia. Richard Preston incorporates tales of several outbreaks that occurred in Africa years before to describe the potential destruction that the filoviruses could

Unlike HIV or other global viruses, Ebola is until this day geographically restrained, facilitating the deduction that the responsible originated from West Africa or returned from areas confirmed as danger zones. The list of suspects is indeed rather short: it amounts to Western Africans travelling to America and U.S. citizen contaminated in the same region. The latter category is, as cases in the western world indicate, consisted virtually exclusively of humanitarian helpers and health personal having been in contact with Ebola patients. Albeit these categories are subject to broad generalizations, they are the fruit of the apparent human condition to investigate, regardless of the rationality behind the reasoning. Seale baptised these generalisations “health imagined communities” (Seale, 2007, p. 92). Lupton emphasized on the experience that constructed risk communities don’t differ from real risk communities as much in their consequences as they do in their

According to Kelley Beaucar Vlahos (2014), it was in 1995, with the release of Richard Preston’s novel The Hot Zone that Ebola’s infamy was came into the minds of the western public, the book is experiencing a resurgence. Preston chronicled how monkeys, which were shipping to the United States from Philippines, began to die in their cages. The book shaped a basic sense about Ebola and the concept of Ebola was present for the first time, additional, author’s opinion effects abounded in later report. In Adam Nossiter (2014) article, one woman lay curled in a fetal position, eyes shut, precariously balanced on cardboard sheets next to an open gutter in front of locked storefronts. From a wary distance, she had a high fever. Michael T. Osterholm (2014) also writes that the Ebola have been caused 4,300 cases and 2,300 deaths over past six months, and in 2012, a research team from Canada proved that the Ebola virus could be transmitted by the route from pigs to monkeys, whose lungs of both are very similar to those of humans. No doubt, this kind of scene did little to allay the fears of the public, even though the Ebola have not yet infected humans in American. Those three logical facts show the severe situation, Ebola has transformed into a completely killer virus, which influences and threatens people in the world. Media’s function in earliest representation is to let public know what the Ebola is, why should public focus on

The Hot Zone describes the true events in the 1980s surrounding an outburst of the Ebola virus at a monkey facility in Reston, Virginia. The author also gives a background of many other biological outbreaks, mainly in Africa in the 1970s to the 1980s. The book starts off in Kenya with a French colonist name Charles Monet planning to go on a trip up Mt Elgon. Monet starts up the mountain and finds a cave called Kitum Cave. He enters the cave and explores and later the reader figures out that the bats in the cave have been exposed to this unknown virus. Monet is taken to a hospital there called Nairobi Hospital were a doctor named Dr. Musoke operates on him and becomes infected from Monet’s blood. Next, Preston tells about the outbreak of the

In The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, Preston writes about his research as he finds the origin of the Ebola Virus while also finding facts surrounding other viral outbreaks. In the beginning of the book, Preston writes about Charles Monet who died because he was exposed to the Marburg Virus. The Marburg virus and the death of Charles Monet was described in such a specific, gruesome way, which shows us how terrifying this virus actually was and what kind of damage it can do to our bodies. The first few chapters of the book mainly describes several different outbreaks that have happened four years before Charles Monet’s death. The first virus was the Ebola Virus is Sudan, which infected a local shopkeeper who unfortunately spread

In the book hot zone it talks about true events surrounding an outbreak of the Ebola virus at a monkey facility in Reston, Virginia in the late 1980s. Preston provides information about other viruses spread out through africa around the 1970s and 80s.Preston does not overstate the danger of Ebola and other filoviruses, he argues that the greater threat lies in emerging viruses like the AIDS virus, whose effect on the human race cannot yet be measured.

“The Hot Zone” by Richard Preston is a famous nonfiction thriller detailing the vivid history of the Ebola virus and the terrifying consequences of its infections. Using a rich vocabulary to add as much imagery as possible, the novel immerses you in Ebola’s history and keeps you glued to the edge of your seat with suspenseful chapters that fill you with dreadful expectation. The novel is mostly well executed in it’s aim at keeping the reader engaged while still remaining true to science though it achieves most of its power by using what seems to be cheap scare tactics and over dramatization. To a reader without a scientific background “The Hot Zone” will be an exhilarating ride, but to others, it may be a slightly overwritten drama that tries

This book displays the historical encounters and effects of the Ebola virus have had on past lives and how the virus functions to destroy its host.

The man coming from Liberia to the United States on the 20th of September was allegedly the first case in America to be infected with Ebola.