Read the paragraph from The Hot Zone and the summary that follows it. Once the cells in a biological machine stop working, it ca
n never be started again. It goes into a cascade of decay, falling toward disorder and randomness. Except in the case of viruses. They can turn off and go dead. Then, if they come in contact with a living system, they switch on and multiply. The only thing that "lived" inside this monkey was the unknown agent, and it was dead, for the time being. It was not multiplying or doing anything, since the monkey's cells were dead. But if the agent touched living cells, Nancy's cells, it would come alive and begin to amplify itself. In theory, it could amplify itself around the world in the human species. Summary of central idea: It is terrifying that even if viruses are dead, they have the potential to “come alive.” Which changes should be made to improve this summary of the paragraph’s central idea
Now this is just a guess but I believe changes should be made to include the detail that there was a dead virus living inside the monkey as well as || add the phrase “and spread throughout the human species” to the end of the statement to more fully express the central idea || add a personal opinion about what may happen if the virus does “come alive.”
There is some important information that should be included in the summary and is omitted about how viruses work. A proper summary should be presented like this:
It is terrifying that even if viruses are dead, they have the potential to "come alive" if they get in touch with a living being, using its cells to multiply and potentially spread among other living systems.
Explanation: A great way to try and get the overall idea of a text is to paraphrase the main idea, many authors use these types of writing techniques to get a reader hooked before even starting the 1st chapter.
