Hot Zone Reflection

The Hot Zone really scared and interested me at the same time. The thought of a level 4 biological agent getting loose in a heavily populated area should scare anyone. It takes a certain amount of lunacy to work in a level 4 biolab. Any mistakes you make become amplified due to the infected area you are working in. Only three layers protect you from one of the nastiest diseases this world has seen. The black plague does not even hold a candle to Ebola. The parts of the book that took place in the biolabs left me breathless and restless. You never know what is going to happen. If something does happen, there is no way to know if they are infected until they start showing symptoms. The lives of many hung in the balance during the outbreak of Ebola Reston. The efforts of many brave men and women helped eradicate the outbreak and contain it in the monkey house. As we know now, the Reston strain of Ebola does not affect humans, but they did not know that. They showed great courage to walk into the area knowing that it was infected so that they could make it safer for others. The book interested me because the Ebola strains may have been around since before humans even developed, according to evolution. The smallest thing can still overtake one of the most complicated systems in your body and essentially turn it against you. A breakout of Ebola that has the ability to transmit through the air and have the same effects as Ebola Zaire could take out a significant number of the population of earth. A single cell organism could effectively wipe out 50%-90% of the Earth's population of humans. If we assume there are currently 7 billion people on earth, which is a death toll of roughly 6,300,000,000 people under a worst case scenario. That would leave around 700,000,000 people on Earth; that is just a little over twice the population of the United States alone. The amount of power contained in the single cell organism that is about 300 nanometers is both awe-inspiring and downright frightening. Let's all hope we can stop the next breakout before it becomes too dangerous.