Your chances of dying of a heart attack 1:5 (one in five).
Your chances of contracting Ebola 1: 14,000,000 (one in fourteen million assuming you are African).
I'm no epidemiologist or mathematician, but you may be safer staying on the Isaac Newton side of Wiehle than the McTaco Hut side.
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Friday 10:00 a.m.
Ebola What?
Find out what's happening in Restonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
This week we celebrate a triumphant anniversary in Reston history. It was 21 years ago that an infectious disease was named after our fair hamlet. Yep. Reston ebola virus was born at Hazleton Laboratories on Isaac Newton Square in November 1989. Ebola is the kind of community event which will tend to make whatever else is going on at RA seem a little less relevant.
The Phillipine macaques (just read that as monkeys) responsible for the outbreak enjoyed a very brief moment of notoriety and they were then euthanized. It's the classic immigrant tragedy. Come to this country to be poked, prodded and bled on a daily basis, experience 15 minutes of fame during which your picture is on the evening news, and then have the public turn on you because of some hemorrhagic fever they say you brought into the country. Totally unfair.
However, to be fair to the authorities, ebola, and really anything which causes bleeding from every orifice, makes the neighbors nervous. The people in charge sort of had to kill the monkeys. What they didn't know at the time is that Reston ebola virus is lethal to monkeys but not humans. Even so, sometimes you have to break a few eggs to quell a hysterical panic brought on by the threat of viral annihilation.
In addition, the building itself became difficult to rent. Nobody really felt like putting an ice cream shop at a location which held infectious monkeys. Go figure. So, the original building which housed Hazleton Laboratories was destroyed in 1995.
This being Reston, however, another building was erected in its place because a) we like to recycle and b) the DRB made them. So, what secret government efforts to create humanzees are happening right now at 1946 Issac Newton Square? Well, there are wild creatures at that location, but the only known outbreaks are head lice and strep throat. The building is now
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