Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come

by Richard Preston

Ebola replicates in all tissues of the body except for the skeleton and the large muscles of the skeleton, and it has a special affinity for the linings of blood vessels.

The French investigators had learned that some of the patients had had hiccups. This detail really caught their attention. Hiccups are a classic sign of Ebola virus disease.

At this writing there are six known species of Ebola. The six Ebola sisters. In order of discovery, the six Ebolas are named Zaire Ebola, Sudan Ebola, Reston Ebola, Taï Forest Ebola, Bundibugyo Ebola, and Bombali Ebola.

Ebola virus moves from one person to the next by following the deepest and most personal ties of love, care, and duty that join people to one another and most clearly define us as human. The virus exploits the best parts of human nature as a means of travel from one person to the next. In this sense the virus is a true monster.

Ebola particles are made entirely out of human material: Ebola is an anti-human metamorphosis of the human form. The amplification of Ebola virus in the human body is one of the dark wonders of nature.

The funeral of Menindor appears to have been a central, germinal event in what would become a full-scale epidemic of Ebola in the human species, the most destructive, fast-moving expansion of any lethal infectious agent during the past hundred years.

But by now there is quite a bit of evidence that the Makona strain is the most contagious and devastating kind of Ebola that’s yet appeared.

“This is how all outbreaks end,” Armand Sprecher, the Doctors’ official in Brussels, said. “It’s always a change in behavior. Ebola outbreaks end when people decide they’re going to end.”

The Ebola war wasn’t won with modern medicine. It was a medieval war, and it went down as a brutal engagement between ordinary people and a life form that was trying to use the human body as a means of survival through deep time. In order to win this war against an inhuman enemy, people had to make themselves inhuman. They had to suppress their deepest feelings and instincts, tear down the bonds of love and feeling, isolate themselves from or isolate those they loved the most. Human beings had to become like monsters in order to save their human selves.