The Hot Zone

Such sensational writing! I found myself gleefully chuckling at some of the more outrageously graphic descriptions. Insides liquified in a bag of skin! Remote villages in war-torn Sudan, I absolutely loved reading about Ebola, although this was published over 20 years ago, and I think there is a vaccine for Ebola now, it is still a good yarn and we have not seen. What I found it hard to get past was the animal testing. For example, the wholesale slaughter of the "canaries" in Kitum Cave. I could not get desensitized to it. I wanted the virus to ravage humanity and avenge the monkeys and guinea pigs.
It is terrifying, as the other reviews said because you couldn't imagine a worse way to die. I was also alarmed with the tension between the Army and the CDC. A true epidemic, given the fumbling and the egos of the powers that be as described in the book, would probably result in chunky geysers of blood exploding on our streets, showering sidewalks loaded with burning cars, rotting monkeys, and gooey skin bags of humans lumpy with hard, writhing chunks of spaghetti- shaped murder virus.

Dramatized version of what happened in the Ebola Reston event. Interesting to me, because I used to live and work around there. There is some good information in here about the symptoms of these sorts of viruses, but the line between what we know and we don't know isn't well-defined by this book. Mostly, it gives the context of a single event, and highlights the possible ways that the outbreak might have occurred, and how if we hadn't gotten lucky, there could have been a much more widespread infection due to bad containment.

There's a missed opportunity here to discuss health policies by the US military and the CDC -- what would happen if there were an outbreak? What steps could individuals and communities take in this situation? Weirdly, Preston says that humanity has "amplified" beyond its natural population size and that nature's immune system (of viruses) is fighting us off.