Summary of Richard Preston's The Hot Zone

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Monet spent his vacations in Africa, visiting the weaverbird colony near his house. He had a number of women friends who lived in the town of Eldoret, to the southeast of the mountain. He gave money to his women friends, and they were happy to love him.
#2 Mount Elgon is a volcano in Uganda and Kenya that straddles the border between those two countries. It is a biological island of rain forest in the center of Africa, and it is being cleared away to make room for grazing land.
#3 The Elgon forest, around Monet’s camp, was home to thousands of elephants. They would have heard the animals moving through the forest, and seen rock hyraxes running up and down the boulders near the cave.
#4 Monet and his friend went into the cave to see where the light went. They found a pillar that seemed to support the roof, and they discovered a petrified rain forest full of crystals. They went deeper into the cave, descending a slope, until they came to a pillar that seemed to support the roof.

Sujets

• Life science
• Virology

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 25 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669366478
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Richard Preston's The Hot Zone
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Monet spent his vacations in Africa, visiting the weaverbird colony near his house. He had a number of women friends who lived in the town of Eldoret, to the southeast of the mountain. He gave money to his women friends, and they were happy to love him.

#2

Mount Elgon is a volcano in Uganda and Kenya that straddles the border between those two countries. It is a biological island of rain forest in the center of Africa, and it is being cleared away to make room for grazing land.

#3

The Elgon forest, around Monet’s camp, was home to thousands of elephants. They would have heard the animals moving through the forest, and seen rock hyraxes running up and down the boulders near the cave.

#4

Monet and his friend went into the cave to see where the light went. They found a pillar that seemed to support the roof, and they discovered a petrified rain forest full of crystals. They went deeper into the cave, descending a slope, until they came to a pillar that seemed to support the roof.

#5

The headache begins, typically, on the seventh day after exposure to the agent. On the seventh day after his New Year’s visit to Kitum Cave, Monet felt a throbbing pain behind his eyeballs. He decided to stay home from work and went to bed in his bungalow. The headache grew worse.

#6

The plane was a Fokker Friendship with propellers, a commuter aircraft that seats thirty-five people. It took off over Lake Victoria, blue and sparkling, dotted with the dugout canoes of fishermen. The plane turned and banked eastward, climbing over green hills quilted with tea plantations and small farms.

#7

When a hot virus multiplies in a host, it can saturate the body with virus particles. The military experts then say that the virus has undergone extreme amplification. By the time an extreme amplification peaks out, an eyedropper of the victim’s blood may contain a hundred million particles of virus.

#8

When a man is getting sick in an airline seat next to you, you may not want to embarrass him by calling attention to the problem. You say to yourself that this man will be all right.

#9

Monet was transformed into a human virus bomb. He walked slowly into the airport terminal and through the building and out to a curving road where taxis were always parked. The taxi drivers surrounded him, asking if he was sick. He said he was very ill, and was taken to Nairobi Hospital.

#10

A call went out over the hospital’s loudspeakers: a patient was having a massive hemorrhage. Dr. Musoke, a young physician, rushed to the scene. He saw that the patient was having a breathing arrest, and he had to open his airways so that he could breathe.

#11

Monet’s coma deepened, and he never regained consciousness. He died in the intensive care unit in the early hours of the morning. They opened him up for an autopsy, and found that his kidneys were destroyed and his liver was destroyed. It was as if Monet had become a corpse before his death.

#12

Dr. Shem Musoke, a physician at Kenyatta National Hospital, developed a backache. He was not prone to backaches, but he began to think that he was getting into the age where some men begin to get bad backs. He was driving himself hard, and he had not been sleeping.

#13

Dr. Musoke was operated on in Nairobi Hospital, and his liver was found to be swollen and red. His liver did not look healthy, but they could not find any sign of gallstones. His blood vessels would not stop oozing, and his blood would not clot.

#14

The American doctor that was taking care of Musoke, Daniel Silverstein, had never heard of Marburg virus. He found out that his patient was positive for it, and was afraid what kind of organism it might be.

#15

The Marburg virus is an example of virus amplification. It first emerged in Germany in 1967, and has since killed 31 people.

#16

The family of filoviruses was established in Germany, including Marburg, along with two types of a virus called Ebola. Marburg virus attacks the brain like nuclear radiation, damaging virtually all of the tissues in the body.

#17

The source of the Marburg virus was never found, but it was clear that the virus did not naturally circulate in monkeys. It was most likely transmitted to them through some other host.

#18

The story of the Marburg virus outbreak in Germany is a narrow view of the larger phenomenon of the origin and spread of tropical viruses. It reminds me of a flashlight pointed down a dark hole, giving us a narrow but disturbing view of the larger phenomenon.

#19

The village of Kasensero was one of the first places in the world where AIDS appeared. It is believed that the virus came from African primates and jumped into the human race through the monkey trade.

#20

When Dr. Shem Musoke recovered from his infection, he told reporters that he had almost no memory of the weeks he was sick. The Marburg in his blood had come from Charles Monet’s black vomit and possibly from Kitum Cave.

#21

Major Nancy Jaax, a veterinarian in the US Army, was making dinner for her children in a Victorian house near the center of Thurmont, Maryland. She had wavy auburn hair and greenish eyes. Her children were restless and tired, and she worked as fast as she could to fix dinner.

#22

Nancy was five feet four inches tall, and she liked to spar with six-foot male soldiers. She enjoyed knocking them around a little bit, and she used her feet more than her hands when she sparred with an opponent.

#23

Nancy and Jerry Jaax had very little social life outside of their marriage. They had grown up on farms in Kansas, twenty miles apart, but had not known each other as children.