The Hot Zone

In The Hot Zone:
A Terrifying True Story, Richard Preston has written
a book rightly called more frightening than
any fiction.

As a horror fan, I must agree -- although
I'm not sure if I agree with most readers
on WHY it's so frightening.

The book opens with a vivid description of
the death of a Frenchman living in Africa
by Marburg. Marburg is a filovirus that's
related to Ebola. And if this account of
his disease and death does not totally
gross you out, you have the strongest
stomach in the world.

I'm pretty sure it would gross even people
who work in hospital emergencies rooms,
since it brings home to them a danger they
should be glad to did not arrive at THEIR
hospital ER.

However, the focus of the book is the story of a
form of Ebola found inside the United States.

To me, the horror is the slow response of
the authorities involved.

It started with a shipment of crab eating
monkeys brought to a "monkey house" in Northern
Virginia -- close to Washington DC. The monkeys
were to be used in scientific experiments,
and came originally from the rain forests of
Mindanao -- an island in The Philippines.

(That right there is scary -- all other cases
of Ebola occurred in Africa. So are there
different strains of Ebola in every jungle
in the world?)

While in quarantine, the monkeys started dying.

It took a while, but finally the head keeper
sent some samples to a friend of his at the
US Army Medical Research Institute for
Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), which is not
far from the monkey house.

Slowly, the authorities realize that the monkeys
are dying from a new form of Ebola, and slowly
react. With difficulty, they enter and
de-contaminate the monkey house.

What frightened me is that what is described as
a fast operation seemed to me excruciatingly
slow. Apparently, the U.S. military cannot just
take control of a building even if it's full
of monkeys dying of Ebola.

If Eugene Johnson had not previously held onto
the equipment he organized to look for the source
of Marburg in Kitum Cave in Africa (where the
Frenchman at the beginning of the book caught
Marburg), it's not at all clear where they
would have gotten the necessary hot suits to go
into the monkey house safely.

There was a day care center right near the monkey
house -- so children were playing just a short
distance from a major operation to contain a
possible deadly infectious disease.

One of the monkey keepers became ill -- yet the
Center for Disease Control insisted he go to a
public hospital instead of the military's high
security facilities (the "Slammer"). How many
people could THAT have infected?

It turns out that although this strain of Ebola
(named "Reston" for this area of Virginia) is
deadly to crab eating monkeys, it's not much of
a problem to people.

The sick monkey keeper apparently had only a
case of ordinary flu.

Therefore, the scariest part is closing the
book and thinking what would have happened
if the monkeys had Ebola Zaire or Ebola
Sudan (two extremely deadly forms of Ebola)
instead of Ebola Reston.

And will we respond any more effectively
the next time a tropical filovirus arrives
in America? Let's hope so. I'd much rather
catch bird flu.