lassa fever for those of you aren't familiar with is a disease similar to ebowla that's communicatable from person to person. the noise itself you get a fever and a couple days later you get the flu-like symptoms that everybody is talking about and if they have a severe version of the disease they believe out. just on one day they suddenly bleed out and a lot of people can die of the illness. because of the kind of horrific manner of the death and because of the fact that it can be transmitted from person to person, especially, when the people are bleeding out, especially, in africa and in other parts of the world, it is feared for some good reasons. and i think a lot of people have asked me why i wanted to go to sierra leon to study lassa fever at the time. it sounds like a very dumb thing to do. and i had friends who told me that before i went. [laughter] >> as well. and i think a couple of different things. certainly, there was a sense of adventure. i got into much more of an adventure than i was planning on. when the time i got on the airplane. but also i think it's that there's a