Poor focus
For Preston, the outbreak of COVID-19, just like Ebola, seems to be part of a pattern rather than something unusual or extreme. As he described, an emerging virus comes out of the ecosystem, magnifies itself in people, sweeps away lives, meets opposition from human species, and finally dies out.
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Preston earned a doctorate in English from Princeton University in 1983. He is a writer for The New Yorker and bestselling author who has published 10 books, both nonfiction and fiction.
He finds some similarities in the outbreaks of the two viruses."When Ebola first arrived, many ordinary people in Africa did not believe it. They said Ebola was a political hoax. They said: 'In any case, Ebola will never get to me. Ebola will never come to my community or my family.' And all of those beliefs were wrong," says Preston.
"Recently in the US, millions of people say exactly the same thing as the Africans said about Ebola. They said:'It is a trick, a political hoax.' And 'it's not very dangerous'; 'I don't have to worry', or 'I won't catch it'," he adds.
"I think what we are seeing here is human nature. It seems nobody really wants to look at a very dangerous thing, and nobody wants to admit how dangerous these viruses are."
Back in 1991, when a scientist recommended to Preston that he write something about Ebola, he went to talk with virus experts from the US army. He was struck when they not only talked about the horror of Ebola, but also the beauty of it as a fascinating life form. "They said it is a little bit like a lion, very beautiful, but can devour us if we are not careful enough," recalls Preston.
He gradually realized the power of nature, or the virus, which in his opinion is "nature's revenge". "It makes no distinction between people, rich or poor, in what nation they live or what their political views are. None of these things matter to a virus."
As a result, he believes it is necessary to pay attention to the conditions of poor people. "We are only as strong as the weakest individuals of our society. When people are poor, underprivileged, live in crowded conditions, don't have access to doctors and medical care, they become nothing but a place where a virus can establish itself, and affect everybody," he says.
During Preston's visit to West Africa in 2015, he went to a market in Kenema city, an epicenter of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, on the first day of its reopening after many months of closure. He met a group of teenage girls who seemed to be quite happy, and one of them saw his camera and asked if he would take a photo of her.
"This is a proud little girl. And she is looking at me and my camera with a smile on her face. She is so confident and happy, and it seems she knows where she is going in life. Whenever I look at that picture, I get the feeling that the girl is the future of Africa, and the future of all of us," says Preston.
