Ebola Virus In The Hot Zone

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

The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston, is a non-fiction story about the deadly virus (Ebola) spreading throughout the world. Certain strains of this virus are 90% fatal, and cause horrible symptoms, such as facial drooping, muscle aches, reddened eyes, and puking. The Ebola virus was traced back to a man named Charles Monet. After Monet, the virus spread rapidly, and it was leaving no survivors.

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

In his book, The Hot Zone, Richard Preston focuses on an outbreak of the Ebola virus in Reston, Virginia and in multiple places in Africa. To show how dangerous an outbreak can be, Preston examines, in great detail, various other viral outbreaks, including Marburg. Preston begins by talking about a fifty-six year old Frenchman named Charles Monet who ends up breaking out with a treacherous disease called Marburg. This wasn’t known until his doctor, Dr. Shem Musoke, ended up testing positive for Marburg after Monet`s infected blood went all over Doctor Musoke as Monet was dying. Musoke survived his outbreak with Marburg.

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

The Hot Zone is a true story about the outbreaks of the Ebola virus at a monkey facility in Reston, Virginia. The beginning of the book takes place in Kenya in 1980, where Preston comes across the body of Charles Monet. Charles was a French expatriate who worked on a sugar factory in western Kenya. In the book Preston describes Charles in all of the phases of the virus. It was very gory and at some points, hard to read on. The book gives background information on the virus that killed Charles Monet. Then moves on to explain another Ebola like that spread in Sudan. This virus first infected a store keeper before infecting his whole city. Next, in The Hot Zone it explains a virus by the name of Ebola Zaire. This virus jumped from village to village due to the use of

It showed up in Marburg, Germany in 1967; Preston acknowledges that, “The virus erupted in a factory called The Behring Works, which produced vaccines using kidney cells from African green monkeys” (Preston 35). This was perhaps one of the many opportunities that Marburg received to change species and infect humans; before then Ebola had only been present in Monkeys. Another opportunity arose in Africa inside Kitum Cave, where Ebola seemed to have infected multiple people (Preston 140). It is not known exactly what infected the people who visited Kitum Cave, however, there is strong evidence the disease is harbored inside the

The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston, is an exploration of the discovery and evolution of the three filovirus “sisters”: Marburg, Ebola Sudan, and Ebola Zaire. The book begins by introducing Charles Monet, a factory-maintenance worker in Western Kenya. He decides to go on an expedition up Mount Elgon with a woman in search of animals and birds to watch. They come across Kitmur cave, explore it, and trek back down the mountain. A few days later, Monet begins to feel sick, so he goes to the hospital. They don’t know what’s wrong, and send him on an airplane to the much larger Nairobi hospital. This is important, because it brings the (then unidentified) Marburg virus aboard the commercial air system, exposing possible thousands of

In the medical thriller, The Hot Zone, Preston states that flawed decisions in outbreak situations are a threat to human survival. Ebola is known by many to be lethal and in recent years, has caused an interest within the public. Many in the United States have shown fear towards the threat of Ebola in the country, which has caused many to also research the effects of Ebola on the human body. Moreover, Ebola poses a threat to the safety of medical professionals; doctors must be able to safely help patients without high risk of exposure to the hot virus. Of equal importance, medical professionals involved with the treatment of hot viruses must be trained properly in order to effectively make decisions and protect all patients and

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

Imagine being isolated from your friends and family, suffering from an illness that feels as though something is burning through your body, while watching people around you dying of the same illness and wondering when it will be your turn to proverbially “kick the bucket”. For many survivors of the Ebola disease, this situation would be far too familiar. In March 2014, the Ebola virus outbreak began in West Africa, mainly in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. According to a recent figure from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there have been a total of 28616 Ebola cases and 11310 deaths from Ebola in these three countries (2014). There were many unpalatable symptoms of the disease, such as “fever, headache, joint and muscle pain, widespread bleeding, diarrhea and other physical symptoms leading to high mortality” (Van Bortel). If one is lucky enough to survive this virus, however, there are just as many negative results of the virus as there were symptoms. Many West African survivors have to deal with their new negative image, negative lasting health effects, or a decrease in financial stability due to their inability to work or find work after they recover. Now that the West African Ebola epidemic is over, (Liberia) there remains the task of assimilating the survivors back into their societies. Moreover, the best solution to counteract the effects of the Ebola virus on survivors is to expand upon the Ebola-survivor-support organizations already in place.

The movement of people, food and manufactured goods can have a massive negative effect on public health. I don't think steps should be taken to reduce these flows except in extreme circumstances. An extreme circumstance would be in the case of a deadly virus that could spread just like the ebola virus. There was very limited travel allowed for people in the affected countrie in order to reduce the risk of the disease spreading. Ideally tests would have to be carried out on every person who wanted to leave the country, a health check to see if they are medically ceared to travel but that would take absolutely massive funding and cooperation from the public. All food would have to pass a safety test before leaving the factories, factories do

The Ebola Virus, also called hemorrhagic fever, is a highly contagious and often fatal disease. Ebola is a very rare disease caused through an infection with a strain of Ebola Virus. Ebola is spread through through direct contact with bodily fluids from a victim who already shows the symptoms. Some common symptoms are fever, fatigue, weakness, reddened eyes, joint and muscle pain, headache, and extreme nausea. Symptoms may become prevalent any time between 3 and 21 days.