Friday, July 27, 2012
The Hot Zone: Part 2
Like many other people I think part two of The Hot Zone is more interesting and intriguing then part one. I am amazed in Dan and Peter's decision to keep the fact they might have inhaled the virus a secret. Even knowing how dangerous their actions were they preferred to take a risk and hope for the best putting their life on the line. I was also pretty shocked at how the research institute handled this virus. In the beginning they blew it off as a possible SHF case without much research done. Afterwards when it was pretty obvious something was odd yet they decided that it was due to some contamination. This book really shows you how weak we are and how vulnerable we are to the unknown and known in this case. Whats even scarier is that this book in away acknowledges that our government keeps possible deadly situations a SECRET. Some of the questions I have are not necessarily about the case but about how they are handled. Like why are unknown virus treated at Bio-safety Level 3 not a Level 4 which is clearly safer? Or what caused the virus to emerge in that monkey house and not the other monkey houses that were mentioned before like the one in Belgium?
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I felt like while reading this section of the book(yes it was much more interesting, yet hard to keep track of all the characters!) that if some of these people have dealt with hot zone agents before, they'd be smart enough not to just inhale a random test tube of possible deadly virus. I just thought that part was so, "Wow really!? I wouldn't even do that!" And yes, the parts where the government are involved is pretty scary. But, my guess is that they just want to try and deal with it themselves before they start a nation wide panic. I was wondering about the other monkey house mentioned too! Maybe we'll find out soon! :)
ReplyDeleteMaybe the cause of they thought of the virus being SHF at first because maybe they were to afraid to face their fears. They wanted something safer maybe. Weakness, like you said.
ReplyDeleteIf I were in their situation, I likely would have kept it a secret too. The slammer sounds like a terrible place to be, and their risk of getting the virus wasn't extremely high, as the people who worked in the monkey house did not get sick.
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