Preview

Research Paper On Contagion

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
368 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Research Paper On Contagion
Contagion

Beth Emhoff, a married Minneapolis executive, flies to Hong Kong on business. Upon her return, she's gripped with flu-like symptoms, has a seizure in her kitchen, and dies. Her husband, Mitch , is in shock. Meantime, the Center for Disease Control is flooded with calls from around the country and the globe; whatever killed Beth is killing plenty of other people, too. Meanwhile, a blogger is convinced of a government conspiracy and hypes an alternative remedy, while others are up in arms and start looting. It's up to Dr. Ellis Cheever and his investigators as well as other scientists and doctors around the world, to identify the agent and find a cure before the planet loses millions more citizens. This disease was a very deadly
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Summary and Analysis: The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
    • 2240 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Summary and Analysis: The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

    A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rainforest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of it’s victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientist is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this “hot virus”. The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving detail accounts of this rare and lethal virus and how it crashes into the human race. This book proves that truth is really scarier than fiction.…

    • 2240 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Gina Kolada: Flu
    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Gina Kolada: Flu

    As is summarized on the front cover of the book, Flu by Gina Kolata is a book describing the “Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918”. The book starts out with a quote from a molecular pathologist that definitely grabs the reader’s attention. Kolata continues throughout the first chapter describing the virus as a notorious and mysterious murderer, turning the masses into victims. Kolata’s writing style is very interesting; she seems to be able to turn boring science facts into terminology that is easy enough for the “average joe” to comprehend. Gina Kolata is not only a well- known reporter for the New York Times, she has a few qualifications that make her the perfect author for this book. In the prologue, Kolata explains that she majored in microbiology in college and even took a course in virology. It is interesting that she picked the topic of the 1918 outbreak of the flu to write a book about since she claimed no teacher or course discussed it throughout her studies.…

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Examples Of Figurative Language In The Hot Zone
    • 525 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Examples Of Figurative Language In The Hot Zone

    During Project Ebola, two characters working in the USAMRIID are introduced, Nancy Jaax and Gene Johnson. Jaax is a very determined and strong-willed army veterinarian, she has a loving family consisting of her husband and two children. Johnson is a generally a timid person, he is an epidemiologist whose studies mainly focuses on Marburg and Ebola. They are both deeply terrified of Ebola, but are willing to risk their lives for a better understanding on the virus. On Nancy Jaax’s first day working in Biohazard Level 4, she puts on her space suit and Preston says, “Perhaps Nancy was in a bit of a hurry and did not inspect her spacesuit as closely as she should have.” (Preston 45). As for Johnson, Preston recalls his dreams as, “Gene Johnson had suffered recurrent nightmares about Ebola virus ever since he began to work with it.” (Preston 35). Both of these quotes suggest that a tragic incident shall soon unfold. These quotes are dark. These quotes give a feeling that cannot be shaken off, a prominent feeling of uncertainty and…

    • 525 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Flaws of Contagion
    • 989 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Flaws of Contagion

    In 2011, the blockbuster, Contagion, was released, featuring several prominent actors. In summary, the movie is the story of a father who loses his wife and son to a completely brand new virus. This new virus, dubbed MEV-1, originated from a bat in Hong Kong. The bat bit a fruit then dropped it into a pigpen infecting the pig that consumed the fruit with the bat’s virus. While pig was prepped to be cooked, the chef touched the pig’s mouth, getting virus on his hand and shakes the hands of woman, Beth, making her patient zero for MEV-1. The disease then spread to others who come in contact with Beth or Beth’s belongings. After the CDC realized the existence of this virus, they promptly started researching it. After several days of research, scientists were able to determine that the virus was “15 to 19 kilobases in length and containing six to ten genes, typical of a paramyxovirus” containing genes from bats and pigs, which attach to receptors found on cells in the respiratory and the central nervous system. The virus is seemingly able to be contracted through the respiratory tract, but kills the host by making its way to the brain and causing encephalitis. The vaccine for the virus was developed by first growing the virus in fetal bat cells in culture, propagating and isolating, and finally inoculating rhesus monkeys with attenuated and dead forms of the virus. Out of desperation for working vaccine, after observing one monkey surviving during the vaccination trials, one of the researchers injected herself with the tested vaccine given to the surviving chimp. By doing so, she skipped the entire clinical trials portion of developing vaccines and had the vaccine fastracked to be mass-produced.…

    • 989 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Demon in the Freezer
    • 12605 Words
    • 51 Pages

    The Demon in the Freezer

    Peter Jahrling, the top scientist at Usamriid, a wry virologist who cut his teeth on Ebola, one of the world’s most lethal emerging viruses, has ORCON security clearance that gives him access to top secret information on bioweapons. His most urgent priority is to develop a drug that will take on smallpox--and win. Eradicated from the planet in 1979 in one of the great triumphs of modern science, the smallpox virus now resides, officially, in only two high-security freezers--at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and in Siberia, at a Russian virology institute called Vector. But the demon in the freezer has been set loose. It is almost certain that illegal stocks are in the possession of hostile states, including Iraq and North Korea. Jahrling is haunted by the thought that biologists in secret labs are using genetic engineering to create a new superpox virus, a smallpox resistant to all vaccines.…

    • 12605 Words
    • 51 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Henrietta Lacks And The Hot Zone
    • 340 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Henrietta Lacks And The Hot Zone

    In The Hot Zone by Richard Preston and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, both authors suggest that globalization is both powerful and dangerous, so dangerous that it can sometimes cause irreplaceable damage, but can also do good things. The Hot Zone shows that Ebola can spread worldwide and have devastating effects. Preston states that if Ebola manages to spread beyond central Africa, then it will be all over the world, from New York to Paris, but “we never knew it.”(99) If Ebola spreads worldwide, there would be a global epidemic. However, it did not, and very few people knew its dangers. Also, the World Health Organization and the Centers of Disease Control have sent people like Gene Johnson and Joe McCormick to…

    • 340 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Novel Study: Code Orange
    • 943 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Novel Study: Code Orange

    First Mitty's excessive research on small pox led him to believe that he has smallpox and showed symptoms of it. He thought it was from the scabs he inhaled before. Mitty needed the truth, and went asking questions to scientist of what he encountered, but his e-mails were forwarded to many different people. Many of them responded back with great interest, some said that there was the possibility of being infected. Mitty then went into a downward spiral, he didn't know what to do. He didn't want to infect other people if he did have smallpox, but if he told his parents he didn't want to be remembered as the one who brought smallpox in the world or set the whole world in panic. Mitty chose to commit suicide (leaving a letter of explanation behind for his family and friends) before the virus got infectious. I personally wouldn't do this because I would feel better just letting someone know instead of going through it alone. But the next day Mitty goes missing. The FBI get involved because Mitty could endanger the entire population. Only Mitty's family and closest friends (Olivia and Derek) are informed of the situation. At this point the story ends with the FBI agents talking to Olivia and Derek. I found that the main theme of the story is bioterrorism, proof of this is that many conversations the characters have amongst each other are circled around bioterrorism. One thing I really like about this book is the style…

    • 943 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Eleventh Plague
    • 318 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Eleventh Plague

    Epidemiologist Marr and freelancer Baldwin (Ice Pick, 1982) team up to write a gripping (if styleless) suspenser about a mad scientist bringing down upon mankind the ten Biblical plagues of Exodus, plus one more for good measure. The dramatized plagues include bread-moldderived ergot from the rye fungus, which causes massive itching, cramps, spasms, and gangrene--as well as later centuries' smallpox, leprosy, Black Plague, syphilis, dysentery, TB, typhus, cholera, and AIDS, not to mention Ebola, Lyme, and more. World-class but crazy toxicologist Theodore ``Teddy'' Graham Kameron, abused as a child by his Bible-quoting mother and now led by a toxic Voice that he assumes must be God's, has been busy re-creating and distributing these basic plague cultures, inducing swarms of bees to attack humans, killing youngsters and horses with anthrax, breeding lice, pests, frog poisons, and much else, all in imitation of the wrath of God falling upon mankind (he has also wired himself up to catch the Voice if it comes to him in his sleep). Meanwhile, pitted against Teddy is epidemiological whiz Dr. Jack Brynne, who heads the ProMED computer hotline (quite real) and flies about the planet fighting epidemics. Jack's parents died from exposure to germ-warfare agents during Japanese tests at a WW II POW camp, though underweight Jack himself escaped testing. His busyness troubles his marriage with star-crossed fellow doctor Mia Hart, who dismisses Jack's idea that a Bible nut is at work. But his old lover, investigative TV journalist Vicki Wade, who does a sort of 60 Minutes show, does take him seriously (in every way). Culminating his campaign, Teddy extracts a superpoison from microscopic marine phytoplanktons. Ironically, the poison might also be a powerful new antibiotic--though that's not what Teddy has in mind. Is Manhattan ready for this (seemingly unstoppable) airborne killer? Creepy stuff. Wash your hands thoroughly after…

    • 318 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Steven Soderbergk Scene Analysis Contagion
    • 777 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Steven Soderbergk Scene Analysis Contagion

    In Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 hyperlink movie, Contagion, the scene that I felt was the most significant was the scene when the main character of the movie, Mitch, witnesses his wife, Beth, collapse in their kitchen which occurs within the first 20 minutes of the film. The significance of this scene is that this is the first time as a spectator of the film, that one realizes how truly sick Beth was. We also are able to realize that up until the point of Beth collapsing and seizing in her kitchen, Mitch and Beth thought Beth had the common diagnosis of the seasonal influenza virus. We know this to be their misdiagnosis of the virus when Mitch asks Beth, “What happened to you, did you take too much of that flu shit?” which follows with Beth plummeting to the floor and seizing. With this movie being a hyperlink film the movie allows the audience to piece the connection of the story together by…

    • 777 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Good Germs Bad Germs
    • 1028 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Good Germs Bad Germs

    The novel starts off with an example of the cost of our war with microbes, a college football player, Ricky Lanetti whose death was caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus (MRSA). MRSA is a bug that could shrug off not only the methicillin family of antibiotics, but also a half dozen others. Worse, this particular stain of MRSA-now known to specialist as USA300- also carried genes for an array of toxins, some of which triggered the deadly internal storms known as septic shock, with its signature symptoms of dropping blood pressure, massive blood clotting, and organ failure. Like Rickey’s killer, the USA300 staph strain is now circulation throughout North America; some of these supergerms combine multidrug resistance with extreme virulence.…

    • 1028 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Communiation Crisis Paper
    • 1456 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Communiation Crisis Paper

    Stephenson, D. R. (1982). How to Turn Pitfalls into Opportunities in Crisis Situations. Public Relations Quarterly, 27 (3), 11.…

    • 1456 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Epidemiology Paper
    • 1265 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Epidemiology Paper

    Latent TB has no symptoms and the immune system keeps the TB inactive without spread to other people. However if the immune system becomes weak the person can develop active TB disease. TB disease symptoms can include low grade fever, weight loss, night sweats, listlessness, cough, hemoptysis, positive skin test, respiratory congestion, and abnormal chest x-ray / sputum culture (Maurer & Smith, 2013). If left untreated TB can be fatal or lead to other complications that spread to the blood stream and infect the brain, bones, liver or kidneys. If the bones become involved spinal pain and joint destruction are possible. TB in the brain can cause meningitis and if it attacks the heart it could cause cardiac tamponed. If TB infects the kidney/liver the person cannot eliminate waste properly (Mayo Clinic, 2013).…

    • 1265 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Ideas In Contagious
    • 983 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Ideas In Contagious

    One of the biggest issues facing the field of education today in the United States is a decrease in the amount of reading done by students. Not only has reading been proven to be crucial for improving literacy skills and critical thinking, it is also responsible for having positive effects in other areas of knowledge like mathematics and the sciences. Reading for children has been seen to decrease dramatically as a child progresses from elementary to high school, possibly due to the increase of outside influences like cell phones that take much of a student’s time in the form of social media. The ideas in Contagious can be applied to improve literacy skills for both middle and high school students by creating school programs that utilize the…

    • 983 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Ghost Map
    • 2841 Words
    • 12 Pages

    The Ghost Map

    The expansive growth of industrial London awakens an epidemic that seems to kill indiscriminately. Cholera is a disease that had no discernible cause, much less a cure, during the nineteenth century. People are dying regardless of their social class or living conditions. Looking for a method to the madness that is cholera, Doctor John Snow begins a quest to investigate the spread of the disease throughout a neighborhood in London and find its source. Snow’s drive to explain the outbreak puts him into direct competition with state run public health departments who do not like to be proven wrong. Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map Chronicles Dr. Snow’s investigation of the rapid cholera outbreak in Golden Square, using contemporary accounts to outline the thought processes of Dr. Snow and his opposition. Johnson also uses these accounts to tie anecdotes into the story that give us an idea of daily life in Victorian London as well as relating this period in history to modern events.…

    • 2841 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Epidemiology Paper
    • 2084 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Epidemiology Paper

    Stanhope, M., & Lancaster, J. (2008). Public health nursing population centered health care in the community (7th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Mosby Elsevier.…

    • 2084 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More

Related Topics