After completing the reading for last week, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Chapter 2, Thirteen Gorillas. In that chapter, my eyes were opened to Ebola. Ebola is something I have heard of in the news briefly when it took a trip to the CDC in Atlanta, but not to the extent that we were able to read in this section. In this chapter, we saw lots of the scientific perspectives of a variety of doctors, including Fay who is a tropical field biologist. We also gained insight into the different cultural perspectives. During the trips to do research, we saw how in-depth the research became. I thought it was crazy how they would have to wait days to find the animals to see if they were the source of the disease. After they spotted the disease, the biologist and team members would hope they could get a sample.
Something that impacted me during this reading was seeing how close Ebola came to home. Atlanta is only a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Birmingham. To have a disease as deadly as Ebola so close, makes it seem real. Sometimes it is hard to understand that these diseases greatly impact other countries to a wider extent than here in America. I feel as though we are super fortunate with the abundance of resources we have here. I begin to be more thankful for the individuals that work so hard to help combat these issues. To think about Dr. Kent and his nurse who had access to the limited supply of the medicine and how they were both healed was neat. This medicine is limited and sadly isn’t a reality for a majority of the patients worldwide.
During this chapter, I saw how many things are zoonotic. Sometimes it seems unrealistic saw how fruit bats, for example, could be the source of disease as deadly as Ebola. I think it might be because I am not as well versed in infectious disease. I have enjoyed reading more about how diseases are sourced and their great impacts. We also see that while there is a spillover from animals to humans that “any such spillover in the reverse direction- from humans to a nonhuman species- is known as an anthroponomics” (Quammen pg. 67). The infection of the disease occurs in both directions. Once we saw multiple videos in class, it was evident that the spillover from animals to humans is more common. The urine and feces droppings begin to make the spread occur faster. I am not sure what I thought occurred to create the spread rapidly occur but it makes sense after seeing multiple resources.