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| Back in the hot zone: what to read about Ebola | Back in the hot zone: what to read about Ebola |
| (3 days later) | |
| Google “Ebola” now and you’ll be confronted with a boxed message from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at the top of the page and a slew of nutty headlines below it. For those of you, like me, who feel helpless in the face of big phenomena we do not understand – say, you know, an infectious disease whose symptoms and lethalness are straight out of a Michael Crichton novel – reading can be a consolation. But it’s hard to string-stitch much comfort from the alarmist tabloid press, WebMD, Wikipedia, and the odd PDF of an epidemiology paper. | Google “Ebola” now and you’ll be confronted with a boxed message from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at the top of the page and a slew of nutty headlines below it. For those of you, like me, who feel helpless in the face of big phenomena we do not understand – say, you know, an infectious disease whose symptoms and lethalness are straight out of a Michael Crichton novel – reading can be a consolation. But it’s hard to string-stitch much comfort from the alarmist tabloid press, WebMD, Wikipedia, and the odd PDF of an epidemiology paper. |
| You’d think that books about Ebola written for the more general public should be an obvious place to seek the kind of security blanket you’re looking for. Unfortunately we’re a bit thin on the ground there too, with one exception. | You’d think that books about Ebola written for the more general public should be an obvious place to seek the kind of security blanket you’re looking for. Unfortunately we’re a bit thin on the ground there too, with one exception. |
| On the one hand, that’s self-publishing’s fault. Search for Ebola on Amazon and you’ll wade through a pack of self-published books by doomsday preppers who are convinced that the CDC is hiding the true spread of the outbreak from the American public. They have titles like Ebola: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid and The Ebola Outbreak: How to Prepare, Protect, Diagnose, Treat, and Survive an Ebola Pandemic. The helpful “tips” such books provide include careful instructions on corpse disposal. This is all grimly amusing stuff, and proof positive that a certain paranoid slice of the American public is descending into panic. But not really reassuring per se. | On the one hand, that’s self-publishing’s fault. Search for Ebola on Amazon and you’ll wade through a pack of self-published books by doomsday preppers who are convinced that the CDC is hiding the true spread of the outbreak from the American public. They have titles like Ebola: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid and The Ebola Outbreak: How to Prepare, Protect, Diagnose, Treat, and Survive an Ebola Pandemic. The helpful “tips” such books provide include careful instructions on corpse disposal. This is all grimly amusing stuff, and proof positive that a certain paranoid slice of the American public is descending into panic. But not really reassuring per se. |
| So, better to stick to the actual published journalistic books about the matter. But they’re rather thin on the ground at the moment, and have their own drawbacks, too. | So, better to stick to the actual published journalistic books about the matter. But they’re rather thin on the ground at the moment, and have their own drawbacks, too. |
| All current writing on Ebola has to reckon with a single, largely outdated book: Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone, an instant No1 bestseller when it was published in 1994. It is, as a matter of fact, on the bestseller list again right now, and the New Yorker (which long ago published the piece that led to the book) has been publishing Preston’s reporting on the current crisis. The magazine stuff is pretty good; last week came a long, sober piece surveying the use of the experimental treatment ZMapp. As Preston points out, ZMapp seems like it could provide at least partial treatment for the infected, though it is not being produced in sufficient quantities to resolve the pandemic. | All current writing on Ebola has to reckon with a single, largely outdated book: Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone, an instant No1 bestseller when it was published in 1994. It is, as a matter of fact, on the bestseller list again right now, and the New Yorker (which long ago published the piece that led to the book) has been publishing Preston’s reporting on the current crisis. The magazine stuff is pretty good; last week came a long, sober piece surveying the use of the experimental treatment ZMapp. As Preston points out, ZMapp seems like it could provide at least partial treatment for the infected, though it is not being produced in sufficient quantities to resolve the pandemic. |
| But if that piece has tempted you to turn to The Hot Zone now to learn about Ebola, keep in mind it’s been over 20 years since it was published. Even Preston told the New York Times recently that he thinks it needs updating. While early chapters do describe the ravages Ebola can make on the human body, the book is largely about an Ebola outbreak among monkeys in Reston, Virginia. The fear at the time was that Ebola was possibly airborne; that fear has now been more or less definitively allayed. | But if that piece has tempted you to turn to The Hot Zone now to learn about Ebola, keep in mind it’s been over 20 years since it was published. Even Preston told the New York Times recently that he thinks it needs updating. While early chapters do describe the ravages Ebola can make on the human body, the book is largely about an Ebola outbreak among monkeys in Reston, Virginia. The fear at the time was that Ebola was possibly airborne; that fear has now been more or less definitively allayed. |
| Both epidemiologists and literary critics have grumbled about the way Preston’s breathless style amplified and distorted the true nature of the disease. He likes to pepper his prose with horror-movie bits like: “He is becoming an automaton. Tiny spots in his brain are liquifying.” Malcolm Gladwell, reviewing the book for the New Republic in 1994, had his reservations about what he said was an admittedly riveting style that recalled Michael Crichton: | |
| Of course, The Hot Zone is a true story and The Andromeda Strain is not. But there are conventions of fear in modern American culture, and there is no denying The Hot Zone is written, in style and substance, in self-conscious imitation of a sci-fi thriller. This is one of the things that makes the book so exciting. It is also what makes the book occasionally dishonest. | Of course, The Hot Zone is a true story and The Andromeda Strain is not. But there are conventions of fear in modern American culture, and there is no denying The Hot Zone is written, in style and substance, in self-conscious imitation of a sci-fi thriller. This is one of the things that makes the book so exciting. It is also what makes the book occasionally dishonest. |
| Gladwell took particular issue with the book’s focus on Ebola’s connection to a single cave in Africa, when in fact there was never any reason to believe the cave was some kind of origin point for the virus. What it was was a good set piece for Preston to do a little stunt journalism by going into the cave himself, even though such swashbuckling tells the reader little new about Ebola. | Gladwell took particular issue with the book’s focus on Ebola’s connection to a single cave in Africa, when in fact there was never any reason to believe the cave was some kind of origin point for the virus. What it was was a good set piece for Preston to do a little stunt journalism by going into the cave himself, even though such swashbuckling tells the reader little new about Ebola. |
| A much more thorough primer, actually, came earlier this month from the science writer David Quammen. A short, quick read of a book, Ebola: the Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus is more up-to-date than The Hot Zone if also less compellingly written. The book is actually a hastily updated extract of the section on Ebola from an earlier book of Quammen’s, called Spillover, repackaged for an America that is suddenly all ears. The stitches from that sudden surgery show clearly in the book, which is rather frustratingly organised. It leaps back and forth chronologically. | A much more thorough primer, actually, came earlier this month from the science writer David Quammen. A short, quick read of a book, Ebola: the Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus is more up-to-date than The Hot Zone if also less compellingly written. The book is actually a hastily updated extract of the section on Ebola from an earlier book of Quammen’s, called Spillover, repackaged for an America that is suddenly all ears. The stitches from that sudden surgery show clearly in the book, which is rather frustratingly organised. It leaps back and forth chronologically. |
| But when he’s detailing the science Quammen manages to sound just like the patient high school science teacher we all want to hear from in times of turmoil. He carefully takes us through newer outbreaks and scientific discovery about the virus. His explanations of biological terms like “zoonosis” and “reservoir species” have a wonderful directness and clarity to them. | But when he’s detailing the science Quammen manages to sound just like the patient high school science teacher we all want to hear from in times of turmoil. He carefully takes us through newer outbreaks and scientific discovery about the virus. His explanations of biological terms like “zoonosis” and “reservoir species” have a wonderful directness and clarity to them. |
| Along the way, while making some nice gestures towards The Hot Zone, he also carefully debunks much of it. Of Preston’s description of Ebola’s symptoms, for example, Quammen politely demurs, “It’s my duty to advise you that you need not take these descriptions quite literally.” He also likes to joke about some of the more dire protocols for disease protection: | Along the way, while making some nice gestures towards The Hot Zone, he also carefully debunks much of it. Of Preston’s description of Ebola’s symptoms, for example, Quammen politely demurs, “It’s my duty to advise you that you need not take these descriptions quite literally.” He also likes to joke about some of the more dire protocols for disease protection: |
| Advisory: If your husband catches an Ebolavirus, give him food and water and love and maybe prayers but keep your distance, wait patiently, hope for the best – and, if he dies, don’t clean out his bowels by hand. | Advisory: If your husband catches an Ebolavirus, give him food and water and love and maybe prayers but keep your distance, wait patiently, hope for the best – and, if he dies, don’t clean out his bowels by hand. |
| Quammen is not, however, totally sanguine about the slow creep of the disease. His slower pace and measured tone is not cover for a state of denial. He explains that the disease is unpredictable in part because it is zoonotic, because it mutates quickly and can hide from us for ages and then emerge, as it has this year, seemingly from nowhere. That quality of creeping out at us from the dark is part of what gives Ebola its terrifying quality; it’s good to know that there is at least one person who, though he might be shaking a little himself, is trying to shine a clear and sober flashlight into the cave. | Quammen is not, however, totally sanguine about the slow creep of the disease. His slower pace and measured tone is not cover for a state of denial. He explains that the disease is unpredictable in part because it is zoonotic, because it mutates quickly and can hide from us for ages and then emerge, as it has this year, seemingly from nowhere. That quality of creeping out at us from the dark is part of what gives Ebola its terrifying quality; it’s good to know that there is at least one person who, though he might be shaking a little himself, is trying to shine a clear and sober flashlight into the cave. |
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