Thus, unfortunately, children often broke out of their illness to find dead parents. Kids, keep that in mind when your parents are freaking out if you get a mild fever. The reason you only have one or two grandparents is that your parents found their parents dead of the Plague.
The support helps. One of the secondary mortality effects of H5N1 was often death from dehydration. She manages to get him to swallow some water, to take some analgesics to drop the fever. Perhaps she finds some remaining ice and, over his incoherent protests packs some of the precious substance around him.
She performs an inventory of her neighbor's material. While she is doing so a neighbor from down the street, well ahead of her on the curve, turns up to find out how people are doing.
The neighbor's final fever breaks. She informs him his wife and one child didn't make it and neither did her husband.
Yes, there is a new voluntary association starting to happen. Okay, it's becoming familial fast.
They bury the wife and child. They may rebury the husband deeper. Their children are playing with neighborhood children, recounting their tales of horror this time in whispers and even occasional giggles. Kids jump back fast.
People walk out on the road and look around. They start counting heads. Houses that still haven't suffered from the bug shout for them to stay away. Those who have stay back, not wanting to infect another family. But if one of those families gets sick, neighbors gather to help.
Neighbors gather to help. They bring over bottled water and administer medicines from their own dwindling stores. Larger groups gather and begin to inventory group material and food. A bit of shifting occurs. The female moves into the male's house and now has three children. There is a slight surplus of some food stock because of that. It is offered to others in the community.
Why? There is no benefit. Why minister to the neighbor? There is no fixed benefit. Loot the house? Fixed benefit. Provide your own precious bottled water to a man who may die anyway? Why?
Trust. Trust that when you need help, they will provide that help. That even if there's no policeman watching to make them return the lawn mower they will anyway.
This was not purely a function of the Plague. In every major disaster studied, response of random individuals in first moments was a key factor in initial recovery. "There's never a cop when you need one." By the same token, in a disaster during the first portion of recovery there is never a recovery worker when you need one.
All societies show an initial positive reaction amongst generalized individuals. Yes, there is also looting and scavenging (two different things discussed later.) But the "severe outbreak of violence" generally follows the disaster at long intervals.
However, in "high trust" societies, the "voluntary random response" continues and grows. In "low trust" societies it falters after a short period, usually less than 24 hours. See studies of the Northridge and Kobe quakes "individual persons response" vs. those in Turkey all from near the same time-period. For that matter, find if you can the study of "evacuation response" in New York post-9/11. A purely random and voluntary "Dunkirk" movement of boat and ferry owners evacuated twice the number of people out of New York as the "official" evacuation.
If you're going to be in a disaster, the best place to be is in a high-trust society. And if the disaster is Asian bird flu the best place is a high-trust, standoffish society.
Let's hear it for the red, white and blue and a chorus of badly sung "Star Spangled Banner." Just don't stand too close to me while you're mangling it.
Chapter Seven
Case Studies or the Grasshopper and the Ant
Was it invariably this clean? No, of course not. In any society there are those who consider trust to be aberrant and stupid. There were those who hoarded and looted even in high trust zones. But, by and large, yes, it was that clean. People gathered together in "voluntary random associations" for mutual support. And it saved our nation.
Case Study: Blackjack, Georgia.
Blackjack was, at the time of the height of the Plague, a town of two thousand in a very small rural county in south Georgia total population of thirty thousand. Counties in Georgia are tiny. I hunted around to find out why and learned it has to do with their charter, which was written right after the Revolutionary War. Basically, the county seat has to be "one half day's ride" from any point in the county. That was so voters (who at the time of the charter had to be middle class to wealthy white males) could ride into town, vote and ride home in one day.
Does any of that matter? Not really for this story. But it made doing studies county by county in Georgia a lot easier, which is why so many case studies of the Plague were done there. Also that the University of Georgia survived with so limited effect.
(Clarke County Health Department was one of those who got it right with the immunizations. It didn't hurt that the Tropical and Emerging Diseases Lab at UGA was immediately consulted and gave very professional advice, that was followed, to university, city and county administrators. No fewer than 90% of the students and faculty of UGA survived the H5N1 Plague and an astounding 70% of the residents of not only Clarke but the surrounding five counties. Athens has pretty much become the linchpin of Georgia at this point.)
Blackjack. The county health administrator was not the brightest light in the array nor were any of the other county politicians. Immunizations were not properly stored. They were administered purely by the two (count them, two for thirty thousand people) county health centers. All emergency services personnel, all county workers and administrators were vaccinated before the first local case of H5N1. (A Hispanic as was far too frequently the case.) Studies of the remaining doses indicated that they were probably less than 20% effective anyway. When the Plague hit in earnest, pretty much everyone went down.
When the wave was past, there were the initial voluntary associations. But once you've made sure your neighbors are okay, what do you do? Sit there and wait for the gub'mint to come help? Not hardly, brother.
There were many people in the county who needed assistance beyond just surviving the Plague. The elderly who had survived (a surprising number) needed assistance. Power was out and it was chilly that spring. There was food aplenty for the time being, but it was irregularly spaced. Bodies needed to be buried.
Did the county step up and get things going? After a while. But the next step was another "voluntary random association": Churches.
The preeminent church of Blackjack, as was the case of most areas in the deep south, was the First Baptist Church. The pastor was away on a missionary trip in, of all places, Thailand. Where he and his wife both died. The assistant pastor's narrative is unknown. He apparently took to the hills at the first suggetion of Plague and his whereabouts were unknown to the researchers.
This left the eldest daughter of the pastor in charge by a form of default. There were deacons of the church and such but they were doing other things to assist the community. The emergency services of the entire county ended up on the shoulders of a petite nineteen-year-old girl.
People who had special needs were brought to the church. A community kitchen was set up. Pews were moved and cots put in their place. People brought in food and supplies as they had them. Emergency crews trying to get power restored had first priority on food and beds. Then children. Then the elderly. Then "associated workers," that is everyday citizens who were helping out. Last were general refugees. If you were able-bodied and unwilling to help, you by God got the last of the food if there was any.