The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that nearly 60% of all Ebola virus disease cases in Guinea were linked to traditional burial practices. Efforts were further complicated by traditional and religious practices. The virus emerged in highly populated urban areas and ravaged unprepared health facilities, intensified by the spread of misinformation. Similar to any unanticipated event, several factors complicated a decisive public health response. The Ebola virus erupted after its original discovery in 1976, emerging at the end of 2013 and spreading throughout West Africa, affecting countries such as Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. And these hypotheses of etiology will have to wait until after the dust settles and we recover from the first pandemic of our era. Similar to the novel coronavirus, there has never been any definitive evidence to show where Ebola hides. Nature is anything but simple,” Preston writes. “In biology, nothing is clear, everything is too complicated, everything is a mess, and just when you think you understand something, you peel off a layer and find deeper complications beneath. However, the truth is that we do not know. The deadly Ebola virus described in The Hot Zone may have come from bats. There is irrefutable evidence that influenza originates in birds and pigs and HIV in chimpanzees. In 2003, SARS-CoV-1 emerged from a market in Foshan, China. Many viruses come from other mammals, and animal to human spillover has happened before. Some say this is a virus of zoonotic origin (animal to human), emerging from a wet market in Wuhan. There are different theories on how we got to this point. Billions of people around the globe have been ordered to shelter in place. There are now over 18.6 million cases worldwide and over 700 000 deaths. There are many differences between SARS-CoV-2 and the Ebola virus however, the lessons from the book are even more relevant today as we fight the COVID-19 pandemic.Īt the time of writing (early August), it has been approximately 8 months since a pneumonia of unknown cause first appeared in Wuhan City in Hubei Province, China. “Ebola Zaire is a slate-wiper in humans,” he explains his 1992 New Yorker article, “Crisis in the Hot Zone,” on which the book was based. The book is a nonfiction account of how researchers, locals, and governments fought one of the deadliest known viruses-the Ebola virus. The earth is mounting an immune response against the human species,” wrote Richard Preston, author of the 1994 best seller The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story.

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