Chapter one introduces the reader to Charles Monet. He is a French expatriate working on a sugar plantation in western Kenya. The story begins on New Year’s Day, 1980, when Charles and a woman take an overnight trip to Mount Elgon, a formerly active volcano. During their trip, they visit Kitum Cave. After returning to his quiet life, Monet becomes ill. The reader knows that he is experiencing a catastrophic illness, but Charles and those who treat him are unaware of how serious it truly is.
He experiences headaches and backaches for several days before spiking a fever and vomiting violently for a long period of time. His eyes turn red, his face becomes expressionless, and his personality changes. Finally, a coworker drives him to a hospital in the city of Kisumu. Doctors at the hospital cannot explain… chapter? 2? ?
In this short chapter, Charles Monet is placed on a gurney and wheeled into the intensive-care unit. Dr. Shem Musoke, a young, well-liked doctor is unsure of what is happening, but he recognizes that Monet cannot breathe. When Dr. Musoke attempts to insert a breathing tube, he realizes the patient has developed severe brain damage. During the insertion, the patient vomits blood upward and it gets into the doctor’s eyes and mouth. Because Monet’s blood will not clot, attempts to give him a transfusion only cause him to bleed more; and he dies that evening.
The autopsy shows that his recently living body resembles a several-days’ dead corpse on the inside. Within a few days, Dr. Musoke begins showing signs of illness. He treats himself for malaria and typhoid fever, but neither treatment is helpful. His doctor, Antonia Bagshawe believes he may have… chapter? 3? ? Several years later, the author visits with Dr. David Silverstein, who has gained a huge reputation in Nairobi.
Silverstein relates a 2 a. m. phone call that informed him that Dr. Musoke’s blood tested positive for Marburg, a virus about which little is known. It was named after a town in Germany where, in 1967, citizens contracted the virus from monkeys transported from Uganda to a local laboratory. Many of the monkeys had been brought in by a trader who was more interested in money than the health of the animals. The virus is different from most because rather than being ball-shaped, it is a filovirus, or has tendrils like hair or worms that tangle together.
They can also roll up into loops, a very unique trait. The other well-known filovirus is Ebola. Marburg kills one in four humans who receive medical treatment and is… chapter? 4? ? The setting now shifts to 4 years later in the town of Thurmont, Maryland, home to Major Nancy Jaax. She and her husband, Jerry, both serve in the Veterinary Corps of the U. S. Army at Fort Detrick in the nearby town of Frederick. She is a petite, determined woman who oversees their family of two children, a parrot, a python, and two dogs.
She has faced obstacles as a woman in the Army and studies martial arts as a way to advance her career, as well as to smooth out her hand motion, which others felt was too quick and could be a hindrance when working in dangerous situations (? This sentence is very awkward and raises more questions than it answers, but I can’t fix it. What kind of obstacles?
How does studying martial arts… PART 1, CHAPTER 5 PROJECT EBOLA SUMMARY The following morning, Major Nancy Jaax rises early to study for her pathology-board exams before leaving for work, where she is in training for veterinary pathology, the study of disease in animals. Her building at Fort Detrick is the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID (pronounced “you Sam rid”). USAMRIID researches ways to protect soldiers from biological weapons or naturally occurring diseases.
Jaax is anxious to check in on several monkeys that had been recently infected with the Ebola virus to experiment with possible cures. The project is headed by a civilian Army scientist named Eugene Johnson who has developed a reputation for being a little crazy in his enthusiasm for working with such a deadly virus. Various areas of USAMRIID are categorized by Biosafety levels ranging from zero to four (the number one is skipped…
PART 1, CHAPTER 6 TOTAL IMMERSION SUMMARY Major Nancy Jaax and her supervisor, Lieutenant Colonial Anthony (Tony) Johnson, enter a room with monkey cages facing each other on either wall. One side has two control monkeys that have not been infected and the other side has several monkeys with Ebola derived from a nurse who had treated an Ebola patient in Zaire in 1976. Two monkeys have “crashed and bled out,” and Jaax is careful to determine that they are dead before removing one from his cage.
Like Monet, they have bloody noses and red eyes, and their faces are expressionless masks caused by the destruction of connective tissue beneath the skin. Jaax and Johnson don a third pair of gloves and begin to dissect the first animal. While wearing space suits, partners constantly check each other for leaks or tears, and Johnson notices one on Jaax’s right hand… Part 1, Chapter 7 Ebola River Summary The story shifts to the summer of 1976 and follows the progression of the Ebola Sudan and Ebola Zaire strains of the virus. The latter 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.
He is known at Mr. Yu. G. , and is considered the “index” case. A few days later two of his coworkers die, but not before at least one spreads the agent by touching and sexual contact. 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 patients and medical personnel alike. Perhaps because it kills its host so quickly, before they can infect others, the virus suddenly vanishes. Two months later and 500 miles away, a twice-as-deadly filovirus emerges…
At this point, the narrative jumps to September 1987, where a container of blood samples from a dead Dutch boy is smuggled to Eugene Johnson. The child, whose name was Peter Cardinal, died at Nairobi Hospital in Kenya of what Johnson identifies as a new strain of the Marburg virus. Johnson discovers that the boy had recently visited the Kitum Cave, which is the very same cave that Charles Monet visited in the first chapter. The child’s death was very similar to Monet’s except that rather than “bleeding out” through his orifices, the boy bled out under his own skin.
Although the story has moved forward in time, the author is still using flashbacks to build the history of the Marburg and Ebola viruses. The flashbacks make it clear at the beginning of this chapter that viruses never completely disappear… PART 1, CHAPTER 9 GOING DEEP SUMMARY After traveling to Kenya to investigate Peter Cardinal’s death, Eugene Johnson convinces the government to let him explore Kitum Cave in the spring of 1988, and he recounts that story to the author years later.
Thirty-five members treated the cave as a Level 4 hot zone and conducted all their work in the cave while wearing space suits and following all Level 4 protocols, such as taking decontamination showers after leaving the cave. The team took 17 monkeys and many guinea pigs into the cave to leave at various places in an attempt to expose them to the virus so that some would get sick, and the researchers would have a specific place to look for the Marburg virus.
During their stay, 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. They did… The setting is Reston, Virginia, in October and November of 1989. A company called Hazleton Research Products houses the Reston Primate Quarantine Unit, where monkeys spend a month after being imported.
Approximately 16,000 monkeys are imported into the U. S. annually, and they must be quarantined to ensure that they are disease free. Veterinarian Dan Dalgard is called in by the manager because many of a shipment of 100 macaque monkeys from the Philippines are dying, possibly because the heating system will not shut off. Dalgard identifies a couple of listless animals in Room F, and by the next day they are dead. He dissects the crab-eating monkeys and finds very enlarged and hardened spleens.
He does not realize this is a result of the spleen being engorged with clotted blood. New monkeys are arriving and are put in Room H. Meanwhile, Jerry Jaax’s brother, who… PART 2, CHAPTER 2 INTO LEVEL 3 SUMMARY Dan Dalgard decides to call USAMRIID and sends samples of blood and spleen to a civilian virologist named Peter Jahrling. Jahrling dresses in surgical scrubs and takes the monkey meat into a Level 3 laboratory for tests. Somewhere along the line he jokes, “Good think this ain’t Marburg. ” While he and his assistants are growing the virus in test tubes full of monkey cells, Dan Dalgard learns that the animals in Reston seem to be doing better.
His relief is short lived, as that night eight more monkeys die. Half the monkeys in room F are now dead. A few days later monkeys begin to die in other rooms, as well. Believing the animals have simian hemorrhagic fever, which is fatal to monkeys and harmless to humans, Dalgard euthanizes the remaining monkeys in Room F. PART 2, CHAPTER 3 EXPOSURE SUMMARY On November 17, an intern at USAMRIID named Thomas Geisbert checks on the test tubes.
Geisbert is characterized as an outdoorsman who loves to hunt and fish, but who is also engrossed in his job. He notices that the cells are dying, puffy and full of black specks. He and Jahrling think that some bacteria must have contaminated the samples, and they sniff the test tubes to try to detect a bacterial odor.
They decide to take a closer look, and Geisbert prepares some of the liquid for the electron microscope. It is late on Friday, however, and Geisbert leaves for a week-long hunting trip. The chapter ends on an ominous note about how a filovirus incubates in a human for 3 to 13 days before the headaches begin. PART 2, CHAPTER 4 THANKSGIVING SUMMARY The Jaxx family is living through a horrible Thanksgiving.
They have turkey with Nancy’s dying father on the family farm and then drives to Andale, Kansas, for another dinner with Jerry’s family. His family is still in turmoil following his brother’s murder. They spend a couple of extra days to take Nancy’s father to the hospital for cancer treatment. Dan Dalgard has been anxious all weekend to get the test results from Jahrling, who says he believes the monkeys have simian hemorrhagic fever, but that he cannot be certain just yet. This is bad news for Dalgard because it has such a high fatality rate in monkeys.
He is also concerned because it is showing up in animals that are far away from Room F. PART 2, CHAPTER 5 MEDUSA SUMMARY Tom Geisbert returns to work on November 27 and uses a diamond knife to cut his prepared specimen into slices about the size of a period on a page. The slices are suspended on a drop of water, lifted out on a tiny grid, and taken to the electron microscope. Each slice has many cells in it, and examining it under the electron microscope is like looking at the landscape from an airplane. He sees that the cells have been blown apart, and that they appear to be crawling with microscopic worms.
Geisbert experiences what is known in this line of work as “the puke factor” when he realizes that the cells look just like those drawn from Peter Cardinal who had died from Marburg. One of Tom Geisbert’s first thoughts is that he and Peter Jahrling have been handling it without proper precautions… PART 2, CHAPTER 6 THE FIRST ANGEL SUMMARY Tom Geisbert develops his pictures of what looks to be the Marburg virus and takes them to Peter Jahrling. As he looks at the photographs, Jahrling remembers his comment while working with the monkey tissue, “Good thing this ain’t Marburg.
” He decides it does look like a filovirus and interrupts a meeting with Colonel Clarence James Peters by quickly flashing the photographs so no one else in the room would see them. Peters orders more tests, and Jahrling sets up one that will better determine the type of filovirus. After meeting with Colonel Peters, Tom Geisbert and Peter Jahrling shut themselves into Jahrling’s office and decide not to tell anyone they had sniffed the test tubes of infected cells. They want to continue working and stay out of “The Slammer,” USAMRIID’s long-term quarantine area. They agree to check their…
PART 2, CHAPTER 7 THE SECOND ANGEL SUMMARY The next morning, Tom Geisbert confirms that the monkeys at Reston have the filovirus. Peter Jahrling calls Dan Dalgard to let him know there is a danger, but he does not share how big of a potential danger it really is. All necropsies are suspended to lower the humans’ exposure to infected blood. Meanwhile, Jahrling is conducting his test to determine the type of virus they have. It involves introducing the unknown virus to blood that is infected with known agents. If the virus comes into contact with its own kind, the sample will glow.
Peter Jahrling is horrified when he looks through his microscope, and blood from Nurse Mayinga of Zaire is glowing. The filovirus is not Marburg. It is the even more fatal Ebola Zaire. PART 2, CHAPTER 8 CHAIN OF COMMAND SUMMARY Peter Jahrling repeats the test and again it shows that he has been exposed to Ebola Zaire, which kills approximately 9 out of 10 humans. He calls Colonel Peters, and they take it up the chain of command to Colonel David Huxsoll. They call all the proper parties, including Major General Phillip K. Russell, and decide to bring Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Jaax on board as well.
Because of their expertise, both she and Jerry would be involved. One of their major concerns is that Gene Johnson showed previously that Ebola can be transmitted through the air. The group now faces several problems. Because there is no cure or vaccine, they decide to use biocontainment at the monkey house. Rather than letting the disease run its course, they plan to euthanize the animals and minimize their suffering. Finally, there is a political… PART 2, CHAPTER 9 GARBAGE BAGS SUMMARY Colonel Peters calls Dan Dalgard the next day and asks him whether they can send some folks down.
Dalgard is fine with their picking up some tissue samples but dodges Peters’ request to see the monkey house. Dalgard gets a shock when he learns that one of the animal caretakers has gone to the hospital over the weekend with a heart attack. Dalgard worries it could have been caused by a blood clot resulting from Ebola in the body. He chooses not to tell the hospital that the man has been exposed. Nancy Jaxx and Colonel Peters travel in civilian cars to Reston where Jaxx is able to look at some of the monkey’s tissue under a microscope. It is so full of inclusion bodies that some sections of cells had simply exploded and liquefied.
Peters requests some samples of monkeys… PART 2, CHAPTER 10 SPACE WALK SUMMARY Peters and Jaxx transport the dead monkeys to USAMRIID, and they are taken to the Level 4 hot zone. She and an assistant perform necropsies with sharp instruments on animals full of Ebola-infected blood. The first monkey may have died of Ebola, but the necropsy is not conclusive. PART 2, CHAPTER 10 SPACE WALK ANALYSIS The only glass allowed in the hot zone is in the form of slides for microscopes. The mention of this, along with the description of the danger remind the reader of the first time Nancy Jaxx went into the Level 4 area and came out with Ebola blood inside her space suit.
Throughout the story, any sharp implement comes to symbolize potential infection; and there is no shortage of syringes, scalpels and teeth in the story. The people working in these areas must be extraordinarily careful because they simply do… QUOTES: “AIDS had already fallen like a shadow over the population, although no one yet knew it existed. ”
“The kill rate in humans infected with Ebola Zaire is nine out of ten. ” Part 1, Chapter 3, Page 38. “When you begin probing into the origins of AIDS and Marburg, the light fails and things go dark, but you sense hidden connections. ” Part 1, Chapter 3, Page 45. “‘Well, sir, I am no plow horse! ‘ she roared at him, and slammed her resume on his desk. He reconsidered the matter and allowed her to join the group. ”
Part 1, Chapter 5, Page 61. “I think I have never met someone who is more afraid of viruses than Gene Johnson. ” Part 1, Chapter 5, Page 63. https://prezi. com/fox87qti4ccg/the-hot-zone-part-3-4/.