Federal and state health officials played down the possibility that any people had contracted the virus, which has a 50 to 90 percent mortality rate and can be
mighly contagious to those coming into direct contact with its victims. There is no known vaccine.
There's always a level of concern, but I don't think anybody's panicked," said Col. C. J. Peters, a physician and expert on the virus.
J. knew that if people learned what this virus could do, there would be traffic jams heading out of Reston, with mothers screaming at television cameras, "Where
are my children?" When he talked to the Washington Post reporters, he was careful not to discuss the more dramatic aspects of the operation. ("I thought it would
mot be a good idea to talk about space suits," he explained to me much later.) He was careful not to use scary military terms such as virus amplification, lethal chain
of transmission, crash and bleed, or major pucker factor. A military biohazard operation was about to go down in a suburb of Washington, and he sure as hell didn't
want the Post to find out about it.
Half of this biocontainment operation was going to be news containment. C. J. Peters's comments to The Washington Post were designed to create an impression
that the situation was under control, safe, and not all that interesting. C. J. was understating the gravity of the situation. But he could be very smooth when he
wanted, and he used his friendliest voice with the reporters, assuring them over the telephone that there really was no problem, just kind of a routine technical
situation. Somehow the reporters concluded that the sick monkeys had been "destroyed as a precaution" when in fact the nightmare, and the reason for troops.
was that the animals hadn't been destroyed.
How does Richard Preston use specific sentences and paragraphs to develop his ideas about the Ebola virus? What specific details does he provide to support his
ideas? Be sure to cite evidence from the included excerpt to support your analysis.
Remember to use the RACES strategy (Restate, Answer, Cite, Explain, Sum it up) to structure your response and provide a clear and thorough analysis