Crisis in the Red Zone

Book Review - Crisis in the Red Zone by Richard Preston

This morning, I have a book that I would highly recommend. I know, I know, our days are so filled with frenetic activity (Netflix, Facebook, Zoom meetings....) that it's hard to squeeze in even one more thing. Seriously, we need more hours in each day.

It was almost entirely by coincidence that I put a hold on this book on BC's online library several weeks ago. Crisis in the Red Zone, by Richard Preston, tells the story of a series of Ebola outbreaks in Africa, the most recent of which more or less only ended in 2014.

There are many eery similarities with the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, although there are a few very definite differences. For one, Ebola had a mortality rate of around 50% and its effects on the body were devastating - hemorrhaging from body openings, uncontrollable diarrhea, vomiting ... it was a dire picture for anyone infected. Ebola wasn't a pandemic. It didn't spread around the world and the fact that it mostly happened in a few African countries meant that it received far less attention than the current virus.

Like the current outbreak, though, there was no vaccine and nothing really by way of treatment. Only now are there ongoing clinical trials for vaccines for Ebola.

The author notes that IF this virus had evolved just a little bit differently, it could have spread around the world, getting to know the human body as it spread, unimpressed by nationality, color or creed. To the virus, we are all just one thing: a host.

In the end, the outbreaks were quelled, not by medicine, but by human behaviour. "At some point, the people just got it". They finally accepted the truth: "Ebola wasn't a fiction or a plot by foreigners, it was a communicable disease." "People learned the symptoms.... They avoided contact with anyone who ... had the disease. They stopped going to funerals...." "They gave up their loved ones to an isolation ward so they could save other members of their families."

And, most tellingly, "When the stakes are your life and the lives of your family members, you figure things out pretty fast."

If you want a good description of the kind of chaos that goes on during outbreaks like these and the seemingly no-win decisions that medical authorities are forced to make, you need to read this book.