Ebola Quotes

“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. Better to step back, blow a kiss, and burn the hut.”
― David Quammen, Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus

“A few patients do bleed to death, Rollin said, but “they don’t explode, and they don’t melt.” In fact, he said, the conventional term then in use, “Ebola hemorrhagic fever,” was itself a misnomer, because more than half the patients don’t bleed at all. They die of other causes, such as respiratory distress and shutdown (but not dissolution) of internal organs. It’s for just these reasons, as cited by Rollin, that the WHO has switched its own terminology from “Ebola hemorrhagic fever” to “Ebola virus disease.”
― David Quammen, Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus

“Then there was a new epidemic—of fear,” said Dr. Sam Okware, Commissioner of Health Services, when I visited him in Kampala a month later. Among Dr. Okware’s other duties, he served as chairman of the national Ebola virus task force. “That was the most difficult to contain,” he said. “There was a new epidemic—of panic.”
― David Quammen, Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus

“no imagines que estos virus tienen una estrategia deliberada. No pienses que guardan una clase de responsabilidad maligna contra los seres humanos. “Se trata sólo de oportunidad”, dijo. No significa que vienen por nosotros. Más bien, de una manera u otra, nosotros somos los que vamos a ellos. Les damos la oportunidad de infectarnos cuando nos metemos con sus huéspedes reservorios, cualesquiera que éstos sean.”
― David Quammen, Ébola: La historia de un virus mortal y otras enfermedades que se transmiten de animale

“The event of transmission, when a pathogen passes from one kind of host to another, is called spillover.”
― David Quammen, Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus

“A reservoir host is a species that carries the pathogen, harbors it chronically, while suffering little or no illness.”
― David Quammen, Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus

“A zoonosis is an animal infection that’s transmissible to humans.”
― David Quammen, Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus

“Everything comes from somewhere, and strange new infectious diseases, emerging abruptly among humans, come mostly from nonhuman animals.”
― David Quammen, Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus

“One animal died and, after it tested positive for Reston virus, forty-nine others housed in the same room were “euthanized” as a precaution. (Most of those, tested posthumously, were negative.) Ten employees who had helped unload and handle the monkeys were also screened for infection, and they also tested negative, but none of them were euthanized.”
― David Quammen, Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus