Hot Zone Post 4

I read pages 257-273.  I didn't read a ton this week because I was busy studying all week long.  These 20 or so pages go into Dan Dalgard's experiences in Africa dealing with the ebola virus.  Dan almost gets the virus from a dirty needle, but the patient actually has West Nile instead.  He gets lucky on this account.  We are lucky in this day and age that there has not been a major outbreak of flu.  This kind of relates to the novel in the sense of luck.  The human race is overdue for a flu outbreak.  On average, we have an outbreak every twenty years.  Although we had the swine flu recently, that can hardly be called an "outbreak".  With the swine flu, it was only moderately dangerous in rural areas of Mexico where there was minimal or poor health care.  In America, people have amazingly good health care compared to the rest of the world even though they don't like to admit it.  By setting up such good health care, we are essentially dooming ourselves for the next big "plague" or "flu".  We are upsetting the natural order of things by unnaturally keeping population from checking itself with disease.  Unfortunately, there is no way of ultimately no way of stopping the inevitable, but we should be warned first.  Epidemics usually originate in third world countries, and begin to work their ways around the world via airplanes, ships, and potentially even through animals.  Everything will be shut down: schools, jobs, airports, etc.  Hospitals may even be limited in their access to patients.  Sometime dire measures will be taken in the future.