[Click here to read Ebola Follies, Part 1.]
I finally took the time to finish "The Hot Zone," the book about the Ebola outbreak in Reston, VA in 1989-'90. I'll relate it with some snippets:
"...USAMRIID [U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases] concluded Ebola can spread through the air."Gee, ya think so?
"When he talked to the Washington Post reporters... he was careful not to use scary military terms like 'amplification,' 'lethal chain of transmission,' 'crash and bleed,' or 'major pucker factor.'"
"There were about 500 monkeys in that building. That was about 3 tons of monkey meat -- a biological nuclear reactor having a core meltdown."
"Some of the monkeys were so badly liquified that ... they just yanked samples of liver and spleen ... Some ... had become essentially a heap of mush and bones in a skin bag."
"Suddenly Frantig's body convulsed and liquid spewed out of his mouth. He vomited again and again... There had been 4 workers employed in the building, and now two of them were now going to the hospital ... Dalgard felt shaken, sick with fear and guilt: 'Maybe I should have evacuated the building last week.'"
"Peters learned he was being taken to Fairfax hospital. That disturbed Peters greatly ... He thought, 'do you really want to bring a guy like that into a community hospital?' ... McCormick would not budge on his decision."
"'What happened?' 'A monkey escaped sir.' 'Aw sh*t!' ... Jaax ... spent 2 or 3 hours chasing it in circles with a net."
"...He turned to someone and said, 'well this is a big Charlie Foxtrot.'..."
"...the CDC [Centers for Disease Contol] decided not to put him in isolation. So Coleus visited bars and drank with friends. 'Here at the Institute ... we were appalled.'"
"All four men who worked in the monkey house eventually tested positive for the Ebola Reston virus. .... They are among the very, very few survivors of the Ebola virus."
"... having certified that the monkey house had been 'nuked,' returned it to the possession of Hazleton Research Products. Hazelton began buying more monkeys from the Philippines, from the same monkey house near Manila... Less than a month later ... some of the monkeys in Room C were dying... The virus was Ebola again. ..."
"'Did we dodge a bullet?' 'I don't think we did,' Jahrling said. 'The bullet hit us. We were just lucky it was a rubber bullet from a .22 rather than a dumdum bullet from a .45.'"
