From Maryn McKenna at Superbug, excerpt but please go to the site for the full take :
" Out of all the scary diseases, none seem to make people horripillate quite as much as the viral hemorrhagic fevers: Ebola, Lassa, Marburg and the rest. That might be due to their still-murky origins, crossing over from the edges of the world of animals into the infringing habitats of men. It might be their uncomfortable classification in biosafety level 4, reserved for life-threatening infections that spread by fine exhaled aerosols and for which there is no vaccine and no treatment. (Four is the highest level. There is no 5.) Probably it is due in part to the enduring impact of the 15-year-old book The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, which in its early pages conducts a master class in describing truly revolting symptoms:
He is holding an airsickness bag over his mouth. He coughs a deep cough and regurgitates something into the bag."
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