The Hot Zone By Richard Preston: The Various Types Of Viruses

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THE HOT ZONE BY RICHARD PRESTON
Question one
Richard Preston pilots the book synoptically in four sections that reveal the various types of viruses including Ebola virus, Sudan viruses, Ravn viruses, filoviruses and Marburg viruses. According to the author, these viruses are highly virulent and expose humans to high risk of infection and in some scenarios; they may result in fatal deaths if not responded to urgently. Arguably, the author notes that these kinds of diseases have unknown cures and treatments and therefore has become an emerging issue to the human health and the public health retrogressively. The central dogma of these viruses is in the central republic of Africa
The first section of this book describes the “Shadow of Mount Elgon.” Through this section, filoviruses aspect emanates from these regions of Kenya following the story of Charles Monet whom he speculates to have caught the Margbug viruses from the same Mount Elgon. This virus is associated with symptoms such as headaches and backaches as diagnosed from Charles Monet’s blood samples conducted from Nairobi hospital in Kenya.
Since the routes of the transmission of these viruses are unknown, the author argues that the same Margbug virus while offering treatment to Charles Monet also infected the doctor. This kind of transmission resulted from the failure to observe aseptic techniques and biosafety measure because of lack of insight into the epidemiology of the disease.
The second section of the book describes the “Monkey House.” The in-depth of these discoveries revolves around the management of the Monkeys in regards to importation in Reston Virginia for research in the Center for Disease Control. During such exchanges, over 100 wild monkeys had been shipped ready for the research operations. However, after four weeks, nearly 29 of the received monkeys succumb to death with unknown causes. These uncertainties initiated veterinarians to pursue microbial studies with specialist Dan Dalgard leading the virologist team.
The team sent samples to United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases for further investigation by Peter Jahrling, which revealed a rope-like virus resembling the Marburg virus. Deductively, the results showed that the monkeys got infected by the hot agent virus speculated to be the Ebola Zaire virus as explained by the blood test result conducted by Peter Jahrling (Preston, pp.86).
The third section of the book categorically discusses the Reston virus as epizootic termed as “Smashdown.” According to the author, the strains of this virus do not affect the humans though it spreads fast in the air causing the transmission to other animals. Much is not mentioned of this kind of virus by the author, however, the strain microscopically resembles the Ebola viruses.
Finally, the fourth section of the book gives an account of the authors visit "Kitum Cave" where the Ebola virus host animals lived. This section elaborates to the author about the environmental conditions that favor this ...