The Hot Zone: The Chilling True Story of an Ebola Outbreak

"Hot Zone is about an epidemic. It’s nonfiction at its most thrilling. It conveys the scale of the threat posed by microparasites. Reading Hot Zone reveals how clearly the damage done by COVID-19 was foreseen, two decades ago. It shows we knew what could happen, but just didn’t nurture our public health systems and global health community to meet the threat. We are suffering the consequences of not learning the lessons elucidated in Hot Zone . Situational awareness is key. We use the maxim that everyone learns in business school: ‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.’ Take the COVID-19 crisis. From the start, President Trump has shown a lack of situational awareness, a blindness to the magnitude of what was coming and a lack of understanding of what was needed to meet the threat. President Trump seems to think that if you don’t count deaths, they don’t count and that if he disbands the COVID-19 task force, the crisis will end. That is not a successful crisis management strategy."