"The Hot Zone" premiered on the National Geographic channel in May 2019, presenting itself as a real-life horror story. Oh, what it must be like to live in a world where you worry about touching railings, standing too close to people in crowds, masking up, being in quarantine, while authorities impose lockdowns all around you. A mere 9 months after this show, that reality indeed came to materialize. The difference is that if the coronavirus had a visually savage impact on the human body as the Ebola virus, everyone would be lining up to get vaccinated.
This show is indeed very interesting to watch during a time when a pandemic is already happening. I highly recommend it. Besides the high production values, effective suspense, and decent acting from Julianna Margulies, "The Hot Zone" makes you think. The two main takeaways are 1) Even after Dr. Nancy Jaax's speech at the end, the U. S. is still quite ill-prepared, as we have been first-hand witnessing over the past almost-2years how the CDC, FDA, NIH, and other government agencies have fumbled their COVID response; and 2) The viruses are not the deadly pathogens - they are the tools Mother Nature uses to preserve the sanctity of the earth and get rid of the real destructive pathogens: humans.
Now for the timely bonus - Season 2 just started!