Commentary On The Hot Zone By Richard Preston

The Hot Zone “...The Earth is attempting to rid itself of an infection by the human parasite.” (407). The Hot Zone by Richard Preston follows a series of true events surrounding outbreaks. The Hot Zone is a book full of intense moments and, at the time, ground breaking information on Ebola, that explains the severity of dealing with Ebola. The Hot Zone starts in Africa with a man named Charles Monet, who ends up dying in a hospital waiting room, later, after examining his blood they found he had a strain of Ebola. Next it moves to Reston, Virginia to a monkey house. After the first outbreak, involving the CDC and the army, the virus in that facility seemed to be gone. The virus came back again, because the company continued to purchase

Once they understood the severity, people that were believed to have Ebola were put into isolation rooms and the staff that entered the room had to be in special suits. The hospitals were devastated at the loss of the patients and doctors. The book does not go into detail about hospitals doing research other than the isolation rooms and suits. The loved ones also did not understand that Ebola kills nine of every ten people it affects. Many times the people said if only they had gotten the person who died in a hospital sooner that they would not have died. Then to be told by the doctor or nurse that it would not have made a

Many of the discoveries made were made by the army such as the different strains, the tests to show different strains, and a test that was much faster at concluding results than the other one. The CDC dealt with the human aspects of the outbreaks, so they were not in the book that often. The major and only big thing the CDC did was educate the peoples of Africa. The Africans already had a really good idea of quarantine but they still handled the bodies after they infected died which spread the virus more. The only thing the CDC had to teach them was how to sanitarily remove the bodies from the hunts to not infect anyone, but still bury loved ones. Once the virus infected the first being was when it became out of control. Dealing with the monkey house was relatively easy compared to dealing with it when humans were infected. At the monkey house they knocked the monkeys out with an anesthetic, took samples of blood among other things, then euthanized them with T-91. With humans, they couldn’t do much more