Susan Rice was national security advisor to President Obama when an outbreak of deadly Ebola cropped up in West Africa—a disease so deadly that it has had a human death rate as high as 90 percent in some past outbreaks. With Rice as the administration’s point-person, the United States and China agreed to complementary steps aimed not just at forestalling contagion from West Africa, but also at working together in the so-called “hot zone,” with team members from both countries working alongside each other at a Chinese laboratory established in Sierra Leone. She draws lessons learned from that experience for prospective U.S.-China coordination during the current coronavirus pandemic.