The Hot Zone: Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary & Analysis

As Nancy dissects the monkeys, C. J. Peters runs a huge meeting in the conference room of Fort Detrick. General Russell sits in to chair the meeting, hoping to keep it from turning into a contest between the Army and the C.D.C. Dan Dalgard is there as well, outwardly calm but inwardly nervous. Also present is a glaring Gene Johnson, officials from the Virginia and Fairfax County Departments of Health, Fred Murphy, and the chief of the Special Pathogens Branch of the C.D.C., Dr. Joseph B. McCormick. Brilliant, charming, and hot-tempered, Joe McCormick has actually treated human cases of Ebola. He also has a longstanding rivalry with Peters. The meeting begins with Peter Jahrling explaining that there is a strain of Ebola infecting the monkeys. Next a nervous Dalgard explains the symptoms that he has observed. After this, Joe McCormick speaks. Preston explains that the Army people in the room find his words condescending and dismissive, while McCormick asserts (later) that he was simply offering “help or assistance.”

Preston recounts the history of conflict between the Army and Joe McCormick, who had in the past criticized Gene Johnson for spending money studying Kitum Cave without publishing his findings. McCormick also feels that his knowledge of Ebola is superior because he was on the ground in 1979 in Sudan during an outbreak. Although Sudan was in the midst of a civil war, McCormick, along with a C.D.C. doctor named Roy Baron, flew into Sudan and located villages infected with the virus.

Years later McCormick would describe the sight of a hut filled with Ebola victims, reeking with blood, and scattered with distorted, horrific corpses. Armed only with rubber gloves, a surgical gown, paper boots to protect his shoes from blood, and a surgical mask, McCormick began drawing blood samples and caring for patients. As he tried to draw blood from a woman in the midst of a seizure, McCormick jabbed his own thumb with a bloody needle. Knowing that he had been exposed, he decided to stay in the hut and help his patients until he fell ill. Baron tried to give him a transfusion of a blood serum from Africans who had survived Ebola, hoping that this might help McCormick survive. For the next four days McCormick worked in the hut, only to discover, miraculously, that the woman had been ill not with Ebola, but with malaria—he had not been exposed after all.

His experience in Sudan led Joe McCormick to believe that Ebola did not spread easily, and he questions whether it is as dangerous as the Army asserts. Dan Dalgard, meanwhile, asks how soon the Army will be able to confirm whether the monkeys are sick from the virus. C. J. Peters says it may take a week. McCormick, however, argues that he can perform a quick test in twelve hours, and that the C.D.C. should get the virus and the samples. Peters is furious, believing that McCormick is trying to gain control over the situation. He asserts that “[a]n ongoing epidemic is not the time to try to field-test a new technique,” and adds that Fort Detrick is closer to the outbreak than the C.D.C.’s headquarters in Atlanta. He does not add, however, that the Army is already in possession of both the monkey corpses and the virus. Fred Murphy urges McCormick to cool down, while General Russell steps in, suggesting that the Army and the C.D.C. split management. Eventually they come to the agreement that the C.D.C. will oversee any “human-health aspects of the outbreak” while the Army will “handle the monkeys and the monkey house.”