Zombies and Viruses

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Zombies and Viruses

The other day I finished watching the National Geographic series titled “Hot Zone” based on the book by Richard Preston. The whole story is centered primarily on the Reston Virus, an Ebolavirus from the same genus as the Zaire and Sudan Ebola viruses which have ravaged human. Unlike those other viruses, Reston Virus does not appear to be pathogenic to human, but is very much so to non-human primates. This is despite not being that dissimilar, which is cause for concern.

The series wasn’t bad, and bad in the familiar ways. Roles were collapsed (e.g., research veterinarians were also pathologists for animals and human as well as being virologists and epidemiologists). I was an infant when all of the incident described happened in Virginia, so I can’t really speak to everything that was happening, but everything seemed pretty well resourced. The uplifting message that we will figure out how to rapidly identify and better prepare for the next spillover was nice. I think this was 2018.

The big thing that drives me crazy in these movies on viruses (e.g., contagion, outbreak, this series) is how viruses get anthropomorphized. That they are “beasts from the jungle” waiting to attack us. Hot Zone was especially bad for describing Ebola as a beast from the jungle “getting stronger and waiting.” I think it is more frightening than that. Viruses don’t have malice or will; they simply are. In this way they are more like zombies from zombie movies where they simply just act. They infect, replicate with errors allowing for evolution, they infect, and start the whole cycle again. This is more scary personally than some monster that we can out think or trap. Viruses just keep coming with very transparent methods and goals and yet we still struggle.


Citation

BibTex citation:

@online{dewitt2022
author = {Michael E. DeWitt},
title = {Zombies and Viruses},
date = 2022-11-19,
url = {https://michaeldewittjr.com/articles/2022-11-19-hotzone},
langid = {en}
}

For attribution, please cite this work as:

Michael E. DeWitt. 2022. "Zombies and Viruses." November 19, 2022. https://michaeldewittjr.com/articles/2022-11-19-hotzone