During the Kikwit outbreak, 59 percent of all patients didn’t bleed noticeably at all, and bleeding in general was no indicator of who would or wouldn’t survive. Rapid breathing, urine retention, and hiccups, on the other hand, were ominous signals that death would probably come soon. Among those patients who did bleed, blood loss never seemed massive, except among pregnant women who spontaneously aborted their fetuses. Most of the nonsurvivors died stuporous and in shock. Which is to say: Ebola virus generally killed with a whimper, not with a bang or a splash.
