Thursday, July 26, 2012

Hot Zone Part 2

Part two was a little harder for me to follow than part one simply because there are so many characters to try to follow. It was still really good, though, and super suspenseful. I thought it was very interesting that the CDC and the Army had such a conflict over who would handle the virus. The book was so suspenseful that after people in the story are around the virus and then go into public, I wonder if they could have introduced the virus to the general public. I love it!
  In this section, I learned how to test for the viruses. They prepare samples of Marburg (from Musoke) Ebola Sudan (from a person named Boniface who had it) and Ebola Zaire(from Nurse Mayinga) and see which sample reacts to the sample of the unknown virus by glowing brightly in the dark. It is scary that the sample from the monkey house is closest to Ebola Zaire, the most deadly of the three.
   I really want to know if, first of all, what the monkeys were dying of really is a form of Ebola. Under the microscope, it looked like some kind of filovirus, but when Nancy disected the monkeys, their insides were not obviously ravaged by Ebola. Is the virus a new form of Ebola, or is it a new, undiscovered filovirus?  I also want to know if Ebola is airborn or not. From the part one, it seemed that it was because the control group of monkeys got sick without being intentionally infected. however, McCormick seemed positive that there was no way it could be airborn, and Jahrling and Geisbert took a whiff of the sample from the monkeys and are not showing any symptoms. So is it airborn, or isn't it? Is it airborn in some forms, but not others?  Also, will the disease infect the public even though they're all being very careful to keep the virus contained? I really want to know. The only way to find out is to keep reading.

2 comments:

  1. I agree about your question about the virus being airborne. I didnt think there was a very clear answer in this section

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  2. I found the dispute between the CDC and the army rather interesting. Yes, they were concerned about causing fear in the community, but something had to be done. I was also wondering if they possible released the virus to the public! That's a really good question. Whether or not Ebola is airborne was never really answered in this part, but if it isn't airborne, how did the other monkeys get infected?

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