Rate the last Book you read

Man, this is probably the most horrifying thing i've ever read but it's also incredible. Earlier this year i got interested in the History of HIV, i didn't read any books on it (did buy And The Band Plays On though) but i did read a bunch of articles and essays and watched a documentary. Well this is about something similar but much much worse: The Biosafety Level 4 Agents. A group of related viruses the best known of which is Ebola, although there's more than one kind of Ebola the one we call by that name is the most deadly one officially called Ebola-Zaire (Zaire being where it originated or at least where the first detected outbreak was) and the less deadly but still incredibly lethal Ebola-Sudan now often referred to as the Sudan Virus which was the Virus at the cause of the first known Ebola outbreak in Sudan. Compared to these AIDS is a goshdarn sneeze, they are much more contaegeous (with them being airborne in some cases of course), they kill you much faster and more violently and the survival rate is much lower. They are also unpredictable to a terrifying degree and everything they've thought to be the case so far has later proven to not always be the case. This was written in 1995 so it doesn't include the most recent outbreak and historically i don't do well with diseases so i deliberately avoided reading anything about it while that epidemic was going on and since meaning i'm no doubt missing a lot of recently gained information, and i've not even finished this but still it's very informative and well written.

One of the best things about it is how he presents the characters/real people, he managed to get me to care about them making their demises/near calls/whatever with these viruses so much worse. One in particular had me close to tears about a young african nurse who had been accepted to a university in america and had big dreams of becoming an important doctor who of course contracted and died from it and that had a sort of not happy but something at least twist because she did end up important to medicine, her blood was the main sample the primary virus research lab in america used for a long time in its studies of Ebola. The human stories aren't the only devastating parts there's also the animals, ones who were caught and tested to see if they carried the viruses in the suspected place of origin as well as the monkeys they intentionally infected to see if they could cure them with various drugs. Anyway, yeah this is amazing. I'm not even finished yet, the thing i'm most interested in is the origins and while i know we still don't know for sure where they come from and what carries it (although it's largely thought to be Fruit Bats) reading the theories and the efforts scientists and doctors go to in an attempt to figure these things out is so good.

He goes into horrifying detail about the effects of these viruses it's probably the toughest thing i've ever read, barely made it past the first chapter with the description of the death of the French man in Kenya who contracted Marburg. I'm glad i pressed on though as he doesn't repeat it every time, he only goes into effects again if there's new symptoms particularly when he moves on to one of the different viruses. The book is downright terrifying, i've never found any horror books scary but this more than does it for me. Think the most terrifying thing i've ever read in a book is the end of the Zaire Epidemic. By the end everything has been destroyed, a bunch of uninfected people are quarantined with both infected people and infected corpses in a building caked with tainted blood. The scariest thing is that it just stops though and it's described as quietly descending back into the jungle to wait for another opportunity to infect a new host. A big part of the reason why i've got so interested in these viruses is because of how amazing and beautiful i find Africa. For example two people infected with Marburg years aparts stories are told and it's thought that they both got it from a place called Kitum Cave on Mount Elgon because that's the only place both of them definitely were. After reading that i watched a bunch of videos and looked at pictures of both the mountain and the cave and it's such an amazing place. Would love to go there, except i wouldn't because i'd maybe inhale powdered bat sh*t and end up bleeding out my eyes. Just shows you how cruel and sometimes ironic nature is haha.

Right at the start of the book we realize Eleanor is an awkward, friendless and socially clueless 29 year old woman, but as the story goes on we realize there is more to it under the surface…

Very touching, sad and funny book. Very accurate when it comes to mental health issues that it is sometimes painful to read because it is too real.

I like that it ends on a hopeful note, but nothing gets wrapped up in a tightly neat bow, because for people with a mental illness, nothing ever can be wrapped up in a tightly neat bow.

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