The Hot Zone Question 1 for Parts I and II

Now that you've read the first two parts of The Hot Zone, (1) what is your impression of Ebola, the scientists, and the repercussions of an outbreak? (2) What possible ramifications, situations, or scenarios could you envision with another disease or virus today? In other words, why is this issue important today?

Your first posted response is due Friday, Jan. 29. In addition to each of your reponses, respond to at least two of your classmates in a thoughtful manner by Tuesday, Feb. 2. Do not respond to anyone until after Jan. 30 to allow everyone time to post an initial response.

To reply, click on the # Comments link at the end of blog entry, type your response in the Leave A Comment box, and under Choose Your Identity choose the Name/URL option, and type only your first name in the space provided.

Comments

Evan said…
1.)

Ebola is a horrible virus that is made to kill. As stated in the book it doesn’t have to kill its host and its better for the virus if it doesn’t because if the host dies before the virus can find a new one the host becomes dormant. Yet if the host comes in contact with new living cells, as if a dead body were to be digested by something or to touch something, it would then come active in the new hosts cells, multiplying, and killing. Ebola is terrible, it literally tears your body apart. First you begin to have a headache that doesn’t go away, then you begin to have blood shot eyes(Most people didn’t know it was Ebola at first because all these symptoms are close to or exactly the symptoms of Malaria), then you would begin to bleed continually blood coming from every opening in your body. Then eventually you would bleed-out, crash, and die. These scientists had no idea how to contain, heal, or vaccinate for Ebola, today there is still no cure. Repercussions, a virus could destroy a whole species, and if a virus were to be harnessed in today’s time we could have a major bioterrorism case on our hands. There is only one remnant of Ebola known, it is in Atlanta, Georgia in the Level Four Hot Zone.

2.) Today as stated before there are more viruses, but more vaccines, and pills, and other treatments. If a virus were to be harnessed it could put an end to nations, it could kill, because some viruses do not have cures, some viruses are like puzzles that cannot be solved.
January 28, 2010 at 11:24 AM
Andrew said…
1. I think that the Ebola virus can kill just as many people as a war. It is a killer nothing else. It gets into your body by touching others blood, and through the air. It kills the human by disolving the tissues and causing massive blood clots. It attacks the host viciously with no cutting back. To know if you have Ebola first you get a headache then your eyes turn red( just like a disease called malaria that is similar to the ebola symtoms. That is why the doctors didn't know what it was until it was too late). You would then get back pains and stomach pains. After you would get internal bleeding which would cause blood clots. When your blood level got too low the doctors would try to give you a blood transfusion. That would not work because you didn't have enough plasma(the material your body makes to clot blood) to stop the bleeding before or after the blood transfusion. Pretty much after that your body goes into shock and blood gets into your brain and heart causing everything to stop. You have so much blood in your internal organs that you throwup blood not red but black. The black is the virus. That is what got into other peoples face and on the skin. The virus just found a new host and it starts all over again. There was and will not be( at least for right now) a cure. The only contained virus particles of Ebola known to man( to us citizens) is in the CDC in Atlanta Georgia and in Russia. These are hopefully contained. There is a good and bad side to that. The good is that we can look at the virus and find a cure. The bad side is people can still have that virus(contained not in a host) to use for Bioterrorism.


(2) Today is much better than it was years ago because we have vaccines and medicine to help fight the disease. The bad part is that the disease is finding ways to come around the medicine and Vaccines. But unfourtanitly some we don't have vaccines like for our friend Ebola. We have scientists that are looking for a cure everyday looking for a plant or form to save the suffering.
January 28, 2010 at 5:03 PM
Jack said…
1) In The Hot Zone, the Ebola virus has been terrorizing animals since the beginning of the earth. The scientists and doctors did not handle the virus with precaution, but as they realized that they were dealing with Ebola, they started handling the filo-virus like precious gold. Ebola is a virus that has two types that The Hot Zone parts I and II talk about, Ebola Sudan and Ebola Zaire. The Ebola Zaire kills nine out of ten people that catch it and Ebola Sudan Kills five out of ten people who come down with it. If an outbreak was to happen Africa’s economy would be destroyed. Villages would have to perform reverse quarantine so that they would stay healthy from the hot agent. The hospitals that tried to help the people with Ebola would have to be quarantined so that no one outside the hospital would catch it. With the hospitals quarantined, the people with other illnesses like Malaria would die and that would decrease the population of Africa altogether.

2) I think another scenario could be smallpox and/or black pox, a type of smallpox, returning now. If somehow they got out again we would be in trouble because we have stopped taking smallpox vaccination and we have no cure for either viruses. All anyone can do if they have one or the other is hope that they survive. Even if a person survives, they are considered very lucky if they are not blinded for the rest of their life. It would be a problem because it is perfectly adapted to live inside humans and nothing else. There is no where for the virus to retreat for us. There are many viruses and diseases that have no cure. If any one of these viruses or diseases broke out it would lead to a world wide crisis, because there would be no cure, no shot, and no medicine that would heal us. The only thing we could do is hope and pray for it to go away.
January 28, 2010 at 9:10 PM
Cameron said…
1) My impression of Ebola is that it is a natural cycle of life. The human population grows too big and then something erupts and sends a shock wave through people as what Ebola and Marburg did in Africa. Ebola has symptoms that are closely related to rabies and malaria in humans. It affects the brain (rabies) and gives you headaches and blood shot eyes (malaria). One thing that makes Ebola stand out is the massive hemorrhages. These hemorrhages bring up black vomit. Black vomit is a mixture of blood and dead cells. The way scientists first handled Ebola was typical. Isolate the virus and then take samples and study it. When this hot agent was on a rampage through Europe, it did not stop till it could not find a new host and it died out naturally. If an outbreak would have happened in the United States at the time it did, most Americans would be dead and not know what had killed them. The aftershock of the survivors would be devastating. They would have to find an area where they could live off the land that was not infected with Ebola.
2) If a disease would break out that was deadlier than Ebola and could become air born, the world’s population numbers would start to decrease so rapidly that the human population would not be able to survive. All governments have to set up a virus protection agency such as the C.D.C. in Atlanta, Georgia, and keep alert for any signs of Ebola, an Ebola related virus, or a new virus that could be worse.
January 29, 2010 at 8:28 AM
Drew said…
1) As for impressions on Ebola mine is get away from it ASAP! It eats you alive. First it eats your eyes and connective tissues. You literally fall apart. Then you start to throw up blood and can lose your tongue skin (incredibly painful). It makes your parts(male or female) swell like balloons. It makes you have so many blood clots your blood can't stop itself from coming out. The scientists are plum crazy. I don't think anybody in their right mind wants to be in a 150 mile radius of this thing. Nancy seems really smart but her husband has the right idea, don't mess with this thing. After she cut her glove I thought she would stop, but she didn’t. An outbreak of any Ebola is bad enough, but from what I see in the book the easiest spreading strand (yes that is a pun) is Ebola Zaire which could kill 3/4 of the human population if not the entire population. We would be perfectly happy with this thing staying in its hiding place for eternity.
2) I think this issue is important today because with all these scientists trying to gain ultimate knowledge there are some things not worth discovering but these guys will stop at nothing to reach their goal, omniscience. The more they play with the Earth's secrets, the easier it is for a non-protected human to stumble across something they dig up and infect and kill many people.
As my science teacher would say this virus is "Quite mind boggling."
January 29, 2010 at 9:59 PM
Evan said…
To Cameron, first of all good comment, second I partially disagre, heres why. I do beleive that a virus is the natural process of mother nature defending herself, but I think we could and will survive many outbreaks.
February 1, 2010 at 11:30 AM
Jack said…
To Andrew:
I agree with your post. I think that there is a good and a bad side to Ebola being contained in Atlanta and Russia. But there is no medicine to fight the disease, just vaccines to prevent it. If we had medicine to fight the disease, Ebola wouldn’t be a big threat.
February 1, 2010 at 11:35 AM
Paul said…
1) Ebola is a tiny, microscopic, nanometer-long organism that is the epitome of a killing machine. It has no brain, no sight, no smell, no sense of touch. All it has is an urge to reproduce and to live parasitically on any other organism that it can. The amount of pain, both physical and mental, that such a small organism can cause is astounding. Its roots are found at the beginning of time. It is one of the oldest viruses in existence. It was first found, ironically, in the place where humanity itself started, in and around Eastern Africa. There are no viruses like it, except Marburg. These two viruses are part of an elite category of killers, called the filoviruses. The shape of the virus itself resembles long, thin, complicated strands of virus that connect in each other in complex links. It, and Marburg, are some of the supreme killers in the natural world. The scientists that handle these and other kinds of viruses are some of the bravest people in the world. The system of holding and observing these kinds of organisms is so incredibly complicated that the slightest mistake can lead to death, and an extremely painful one at that. These scientists deal with, arguably, the most deadly things on the planet on a daily basis. Some of these diseases have no cure, no vaccine, no weak point where the human race could fight against the obvious threat that these monsters present. When it comes right down to it, it’s the human race against a natural executioner. And, so far, the human race has lost. We haven’t found the source of Ebola or Marburg. We haven’t created a vaccine against it. We haven’t come up with a cure. This will almost certainly have a horrifyingly large consequence on the human race as a whole.

2) Obviously, the United States of America is not the most popular country in the world. It isn’t liked by the world as a whole. There are men and women and possibly children who live and breathe and die in the effort and focus of seeing the USA destroyed, crippled beyond repair. The idea is not necessarily an isolated one. We are not looking at a possible threat is far Asia or the Middle East. We are looking everywhere, now, for the possibility of an enemy. And there is an extremely strong and all-too possible chance that it will come in the form of a country that uses biological terrorism. If a country that is not friendly towards the USA controls and harnesses and has at their disposal a disease to which we have no cure, then this country in its entirety could be devastated by the effects of a disease that we cannot control, stop, or slow down. This is a threat not to Black people, not to Caucasian people, not to the poor, or the rich, nor the Catholics or the Atheists. This is a threat to the United States of America. To every man, woman and child that walks among the Land of the Free, everyone who is alive and calls themselves a citizen of this country. The threat is real. And it’s out there.
February 1, 2010 at 3:01 PM
drew said…
to Andrew: I like yours too, it is realy instering. It says ebola kill as many as in wars but it propably kills more. But what about the scientists in the book what's your opinion on them?
February 2, 2010 at 8:00 AM
Cameron said…
To Drew: First, if you have a virus that has a chance to become air born you have to contain it before you can even try to escape from the virus There is a chance that Ebola can become airborne so have fun running from an airborne virus that is spreading throughout the country if it ever happens. Secondly, Ebola will not hide forever. Ebola will find a way into the human body and then destroy our body in a different matter because we will probably develop a vaccine or medicine for it. Finally, scientists all over the world are trying to figure out what is made of to find a cure, medicine and a vaccine but until we figure that out we will be in the dark and still trying to just survive in an infected world.
February 2, 2010 at 8:02 AM
Andrew said…
to Evan: I agree that ebola is a horrible. Also, I agree that if a virus is contained take ebola for example it would cause the same fear as a terrorist attack (bioterrorism). Your symtoms were well laid out and very specific. With your second comment It can cause contries to shut down and just be a big heap of bodies and looked like nobody ever lived there.
February 2, 2010 at 8:02 AM
Drew said…
to Jack: Good theroy on what Ebola has done since it originated.You forgot Marburg in types but we are all human. There is no win/win situation with Ebola, I agree. nice wrap up, ominous ending.
February 2, 2010 at 8:07 AM
Andrew said…
to drew: I think you were right on how you just feel terrible. I also agree with how scientists go there, but it is their job. If you don't want to die there has to be a cure especially for ebola zaire. If scientists don't research it there could be ebola in your body right now. All in all I like how you don't want our people getting near it especially our people( who we pay tax money for the education and equipment).
February 2, 2010 at 8:08 AM
Drew said…
To Paul: Very long, great details, and very awesome. I can't say much more than that.
February 2, 2010 at 8:18 AM
Cameron said…
To Paul: I agree with you one hundred and ten percent! Ebola is just a killer that can kill anything it wants and stop when it wants. If a country can turn it into a weapons grade virus, as you said, there would be no stopping it and The Land of the Free would now become a land of nothing. The survivors would have nothing and we would have to go and live in another country and The United States of America would be no more.
February 2, 2010 at 8:19 AM
Evan said…
To Jack, I completly agree with you on the fact that Ebola has been terrorizing people since the begginning of time. I also think that would be quarintined like you said and that we could all make it through.
February 2, 2010 at 10:27 AM
Paul said…
Jack, I really love the second part of your comment. It seems like you really did your research on this subject of smallpox and/or blackpox. You had a lot of detail. And, like you said, this disease would be incredibly deadly if it had nowhere else to retreat to. Our only option would be to attempt to destroy it all together. If this virus was custom-made to live and feed and grow in humans, then there would be a crisis the likes of which haven't been seen since the Black Plague. The very thought is horrifying in itself. This would be a serious disaster for the world as a whole.
February 2, 2010 at 1:17 PM
Paul said…
Cameron, I partly agree with your answer. I mean, it really is up to the countries and the nations of the world to be responsible enough to see, identify, and control a threat in the effort of all humanity. We, we as a race, will all benifit from an organization that moniters these viruses in other countries. Although the USA is great, we cannot compensate for the irresponsibilty of other nations around the world.

But, however, I don't agree with your descriptions of Ebola. It seems to me (after looking in the book) that you are describing Marburg, not Ebola. They both have a devastating efect on the population, obviously, but they have distinct symptoms that seperate one from the other. If it was a form of Ebola, it would have possibly been named Ebola Marburg. Also, I am deeply flattered by your response.
February 2, 2010 at 1:31 PM
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