Part 1: The book was very interesting to me and I was amazed at how Richard Preston explained the feelings in detail. I felt as though I was going through all the pain and shock as everyone else in the book. I was very disgusted on what happened to Charles Monet and how he died by the Ebola virus. I think its very horrible on what people went through to have the Ebola virus and only live ten days. Not to mention the horrible death that comes with it. My reaction at first was that it was not a big deal, this is a book so what are the chance of that happening to me.
Then as I read more on the subject I was a little worried that I could somehow just like in the book catch Ebola and die. As I read on I felt horrible at how much a small microscopic virus can kill so many people and how it can spread so fast. These viruses are the most dangerous things on the earth and still exist on the planet. There must be some kind of way to get rid of them completely. I think the most dangerous virus is the Ebola Virus because of the symptoms you get to die from it. I would not like to die vomiting all my blood and then bleeding out in the end.
I did get worried when they said that one of the viruses could be air born and travel from person to person. I would not like to work near people, who work with any kind of virus. That is just an accident waiting to happen, and I don’t want to any percent chance of getting a virus. I thought that Nancy was crazy for wanting to work with Ebola Virus in the first place. To be honest I was mostly confused because I’m not use to reading these kinds of books so I still have trouble processing what’s happening in the story, but I get the gist of it.
Richard Preston did terrific on explaining and giving detail on the Filoviruses in the book. He gave very good feeling of how the person would feel when they were infected and gave the reader the same feeling as if they had the disease themselves. Even though I was disgusted at the thing he explained I was amazed on his writing. The fact is that the things he says are true and could really happen to anyone, which is scary for me to think about. To imagine waking up one day and that you start to get pains and discover that you have a virus in you that is level 4. You realize you only have ten days to live.
What would you do in those ten days? I would try to live my life to the fullest or try to find a cure as soon as possible, even though there might not even be one. It’s a scary thought for me to think about so I won’t really worry about it yet till it occurs, but I’ll still be careful. Part 2: Chapter 1 Something in the Forest. Charles Monet is a man who a loner who works at Nzoia Sugar Factory. One day he goes in the mountains with his friend to Mount Elgon. They explored the mountain and caves for their Christmas vacation. Soon after the trip, Charles Monet started getting headaches and was getting very ill.
Concerned for his health, Charles Monet’s friends send him on a plane to Nairobi Hospital in East Africa where he can get proper treatment. Through out the airplane flight, Charles Monet was getting worse and vomiting blood with black substance. When Charles Monet arrived at the hospital he sat down waiting for treatment when all of a sudden he falls down, bleeding out on the floor. Chapter 2 Jumper. As Charles Monet was bleeding out, he was sent to a Dr. Musoke for emergency treatment. As Dr. Musoke tried to save Charles Monet, Monet vomited one last time and some of the vomit got in Dr. Musoke’s eyes and mouth.
Soon after Charles Monet died. They could not find out what was the cause of Charles Monet’s death. Nine days later, Dr. Musoke started having backaches. He thought it was natural for how much he was working and his age. Then he looked in the mirror to realize he had red eyes. He thought it was a sign of malaria so he took some medicine to help, but it did no good. He got more worse overtime and he was unable diagnose himself, so he presented himself to Dr. Antonia Bagshawe, a physician at the hospital. She examined him but could not find any problem with Dr. Musoke. Dr. Antonia Suggest to explore Dr.
Musoke inside to see what is causing his sickness and what they find they could not explain. David Silverstein, a colleague of Dr. Musoke suspects he has a virus and takes a sample to send to an institute and disease control. Chapter 3 Diagnosis. Silverstein is called about Dr. Musoke’s Blood has Marburg. Silverstein searches for what Marburg to find that it was named after a town in Germany. It was started in Germany because of the monkeys that were brought from Uganda to traders. The inspector who inspected the monkeys thought they were being killed, but were actually being put on an island.
Soon afterwards, Dr. Musoke got better and was no longer sick. Chapter 4 A Woman and a Soldier. Four years later after Charles Monet’s Death Nancy Jaax is at home with her kids. Nancy is married to Jerry who both served in the veterinary corps. She is studying martial arts to advance in her hand control in level 4-biohazard work. She one-day cuts open a can with a knife and cuts her hand severely, Chapter 5 Project Ebola. Nancy wakes up to go to her job at USAMRIID. Everyone there thinks Nancy should not work in level 4 because she is a girl.
They spread rumors to keep her from working in level 4 until colonel Johnson said he would let her work in Level 4 unless he goes with her to see how she will do. She goes through the procedures to get her suit on for level 4. Chapter 6 Total immersion. Nancy and Johnson are in their suits and are in the level 4 Biohazard room. Nancy sees the monkeys in the cages rattling, because they are anxious with the people in the suits. Nancy feels sad because she was a veterinarian and seeing them kill these animals is cruel to her, but she tries to think it’s best for the humanity as well.
Afterwards, one of the monkeys bleed out so Nancy and Johnson try to operated on the monkey before the virus liquefy the monkeys intestines. Johnson operates on the monkey and cuts it open with scissors because sharp knives are dangerous in a Level 4 room. Then Johnson cuts the monkeys head open, too. Johnson realizes a hole in Nancy’s first layer gloves, so she cleans it. Then Nancy realizes there was a hole in her right hand suit and feels the monkey’s blood on her skin. She tells Johnson and he tells her to get out quickly. She leaves and gets decontaminate by the shower.
She runs out and takes the suit off to see if she has been contaminated and to see if it got in her wound. She panics and thinks of everything she should have done but didn’t. Luckily the virus did not contaminate her and she is fine. Later the two healthy monkeys bled out from the virus even though they were not injected by it. They suspect that the virus might be able to travel through air. Chapter 7 Ebola River. The story shifts to the summer of 1976 and follows the progression of the Ebola Sudan and Ebola Zaire strains of the virus.
This virus is the one injected 7 years later into the monkeys at USAMRIID. It begins with the death of a storekeeper in a cotton factory in southern Sudan known as Mr. Yu. G. A few days later two of his coworkers die, but not before one spreads the virus. It passes through 16 generations and kills 50 percent of those infected. Ebola Zaire hits the hospital in the town of Maridi, where it kills the patients and medical staff. Because it kills its host so quickly, before they can infect others, the virus suddenly vanishes.
Two months later, 500 miles away, a twice-as-deadly virus emerges in Zaire at a mission hospital that uses five syringes a day to administer medicine to hundreds of people. The virus erupts in 55 villages around the hospital. One nun from the village, Sister M. E. , was taken to the city of Kinshasa where she infects Nurse Mayinga. Disregarding her own symptoms, the nurse travels around the city before returning to the hospital to die. As the epidemic grows, samples of the nurse’s blood were sent around the world to research the illness. They found out that the illness was related to the Marburg virus.
Dr. Karl Johnson of the CDC named the virus Ebola after a river in the area where it was discovered. The World Health Organization and international doctors travel to the area to try to stop the outbreak. Eventually, the virus dies out. Chapter 8 Cardinal. A dead Dutch boy is smuggled to Eugene Johnson. The child, whose name was Peter Cardinal, died at Nairobi Hospital in Kenya from what Johnson believes it as a new strain of the Marburg virus. Johnson discovers that the boy had visited the Kitum Cave, which is the same cave that Charles Monet visited.
The child’s death was like Monet’s death, but instead of bleeding out through his mouth and other holes in his body, the boy bled out from his own skin. Chapter 9 Going Deep. After investigate Peter Cardinal’s death, Eugene Johnson convinces the government to let him explore Kitum Cave in the spring. Johnson took 35 people with him. They treated the cave as a Level 4 hot zone and conducted all their work in the cave while wearing space suits. The team took 17 monkeys and many guinea pigs into the cave to leave at various places in order to expose them to the virus so the researchers would have a specific place to look for the Marburg virus.
They collected between 30,000 and 70,000 biting insects, trapped and dissected hundreds of small animals, and eventually killed and studied all the monkeys. Marburg in the animals, although local people often shared stories of someone they knew dying a bloody death from what might have been the virus. In the summer of 1989, the Nancy was stationed at the Institute of Chemical Defense in Maryland. Nancy’s former commander at USAMRIID changed jobs and promoted Nancy into his old job. Chapter 10 Reston.