The Hot Zone is a great read and I am glad I got to it. During the pandemic and after, I have wondered like many others why Ebola was able to be contained and Covid was not. For the layperson the answer is not obvious:
In any case, the Ebola Sudan virus destroyed a few hundred people in central Africa the way a fire consumes a pile of straw—until the blaze burns out at the center and ends in a heap of ash—rather than smoldering around the planet, as AIDS has done, like a fire in a coal mine, impossible to put out. The Ebola virus, in its Sudan incarnation, retreated to the heart of the bush, where undoubtedly it lives to this day, cycling and cycling in some unknown host, able to shift its shape, able to mutate and become become a new thing, with the potential to enter the human species in a new form.
There apparently no such thing as a virus sensor. So if there is something deadly, species-threatening level even, we would never know. We could breathe it, come into contact through a minor cut in our skin. It does not have to any notable event for a human to get infected by a virus
There are no instruments that can detect a virus. The best way to find a virus in the wild, at the present time, is to place a sentinel animal at the suspected location of the virus and hope the animal gets sick.
The frightening story of Ebola that book tells, leaves the reader wondering what if any control they can have over their lives. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time (in a sense) can get a person sick to dead in the matter of days. No one will likely step into such a situation of their own volition but mistakes and accidents happen. The fact that we and our loved one are alive seems like the greatest miracle after reading the book.
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