It is no exaggeration to say that the current global epidemic of the new crown virus has made the well-known American non-fiction writer Richard Preston have a sense of "déjà vu". 26 years ago, as soon as his work "Blood Plague" depicting the origin of the Ebola virus was published, it triggered a global discussion, not only in the field of non-fiction writing, the publishing world, but also in the field of public health involved in the book.
Bloodspring: Ebola's Past, Present, and Future
In 2014, "Blood: The Past, Present and Future of Ebola", which also focused on the once discolored Ebola virus, was launched in the United States, followed by readers, TV series adaptations... Another whirlwind of topics was set off. Today, its Chinese Simplified edition has officially joined the "Translation Documentary" series of Shanghai Translation Publishing House, "cutting" the Ebola virus for everyone to see.
Compared with the previous game "Blood Plague: The Story of Ebola", Richard Preston's "Blood: Ebola's Past, Present and Future" brought 10 years later focuses on the story closer to our time. In December 2013, a two-year-old boy in the village of Meleondu, Guinea, Africa, died of Ebola. Subsequently, his family and villagers fell ill and died one after another. More than a month later, the virus entered the capital Conakry. By late March 2014, cases had been imported into Sierra Leone and Liberia... The World Health Organization then declared a resurgence of the Ebola outbreak.
The story in Bloody Death begins with the Ebola outbreak in 2014. "The characters and events in the book are real, and I report and tell them in as much detail as possible." Richard Preston said in an interview with reporters that the words came from hundreds of personal interviews and years of research on published and unpublished archives and raw materials, and that "the original quotes are from interviews I interviewed or their recollections of the deceased's remarks." ”
Preston said that to this day, the origin of Ebola is still a mystery. "All we know is that it was started from a one-and-a-half-year-old boy who was infected with the virus in bats." Preston describes this scene in the book: "The children of Meleondu [in Guinea] sometimes light a small campfire in a cave at the root of a tree. Smoke rose up along the hollow tree, and bats were frightened and flew out of the tree hole. Some were smoked and fell off. Older children gather around holes in the roots of trees, stab bats with sharpened sticks, and roast them on the fire like marshmallows. "The first child infected may have eaten an uncooked bat, or the bat's blood and urine touched a wound on his eye or skin, or he may have been bitten by a bat fly that sucked bat blood for a living." Thus, the Ebola virus began to enter the human world.
Stills from the American drama "The Hot Zone"
It is worth mentioning that the story of the Ebola virus brought out by "Blood Plague" and "Blood Death" has become a hot IP of the fire since its writing. Exactly one year ago, the American drama "The Hot Zone", based on the book "Blood Plague", also aroused widespread discussion. This mini-series of only 6 episodes has so far rated 8.1 on Douban, and nearly 80% of the more than 50,000 netizens have given more than 4 stars.
Preston said that from the story of the Ebola virus described in the book, humans can actually learn a lot, and its lessons are particularly important for today's world. "We are living in a world of COVID-19 pandemics, and what happened in Africa is being repeated in the form of COVID-19."
In his view, the epidemic of Ebola virus and new crown pneumonia virus should be particularly worthy of human attention and deep consideration: "The virus is an ancient life form, which has existed for a billion years, far older than humans." It needs a host to survive, which means it survives in large animals, it can survive in parasitic objects for a long time, and it can migrate between species. You can think of a virus as a rat trying to survive a ship that is going to sink. When species are in danger, ecosystems are in trouble, or upheaval occurs, viruses instinctively want to leave the system and jump to the human system. ”
Preston said that the virus is whether people are rich or poor, which country they are, "human beings are just a piece of meat to them, a place to live." The spread of the Ebola virus is like a sudden forest fire, which shows the power of nature. Humans are a very fragile species. These new viruses are nature's revenge. ”
Author Bio >>
Richard Preston ,born in 1954, is an American nonfiction writer and Contributor to The New Yorker. He excels at dealing with scientific subjects in a non-fictional manner. In 1984, his first non-fiction work on astronomical subjects, The First Light, won the American Physical Society's Science Writing Award. In 1994, Preston's classic Blood Plague was released, a huge success depicting the origins of the Ebola virus, topping the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list for 61 weeks. Preston received the 2017 Award from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and he is the only ever recipient to receive the award as a non-physician.
Upstream News Chongqing Morning News reporter Qiu Jinyi