“We all need some sleep,” the Communications Director said. “Can we at least test the language?”
The Chief of Staff, sitting nearby but not following the conversation, said to no one in particular, “It’s my daughter’s birthday.”
The President ignored her. “Just draft a straightforward statement,” he instructed the Communications Director.
“Excuse me,” the Chief of Staff said as she got up and walked out of the cabin.
The Communications Director looked around the room. “We’re talking about a minimum of forty-five thousand premature deaths. What am I supposed to say?”
“We need to prepare the country for the worst,” the President replied. He outlined a rough plan. The Acting HHS Secretary would brief Congress on the basic details: the state of our Dormigen supplies; the nature of Capellaviridae; the steps that had been taken to minimize the adverse effects of the Outbreak. Those details would be released to the public immediately following the briefing and the President would address the nation after that. “This is the reality of the situation,” the President stated. “We shouldn’t try to sugarcoat it.”
He was right, of course. How could one put a positive spin on an outbreak that might kill over a hundred thousand people—however weak, old, or sick those people may be? The advisers who had been working around the clock to avert this moment were loath to concede that their efforts had been fruitless. “I still think we need to pay attention to how we explain this,” the Communications Director said, implicitly probing the Strategist’s absence.
“He’s not here,” the President said tersely. “Just do your job.”
The Secretary of State had also gone missing, but her absence would not be noted for some time.
65.
I AWOKE FEELING DIFFERENT THAN I HAD IN DAYS. I COULD remember my dreams, one of which had been about a giant chocolate almond ice-cream cone. If I had been in a soap commercial, I would have danced around the bedroom singing about how refreshed I felt. I reached for my phone on the bedstand; there were eighteen texts from various people at the NIH headquarters. I had told the NIH Director that I needed a morning to sleep and think. She agreed it was a good idea, but as the Dormigen deadline drew nearer without any meaningful progress on our part, the staff had begun to confuse motion for progress. Only one of the texts required any real input from me; the others either boasted of some new activity or posed questions with answers that were self-evident. Ellen had already gone to work. She left a note at the foot of the bed wishing me a good day and telling me that she had made an omelet that I could heat up in the microwave. “Sorry if I have not been as supportive as I should be!” it concluded, with a little smiley face. That just made me feel bad, particularly as I texted Jenna before leaving the apartment.
I put the omelet in the microwave and wandered over to the window while it heated up. We lived on the fourth floor, high enough to get a decent sense of the activity below. Three boys in Catholic school uniforms hustled along the sidewalk. They had to be late, I thought. Across the street, a bakery truck was double-parked as two guys unloaded trays of bread onto a trolley and wheeled it into a small convenience store. The initial panic of the Outbreak had given way to normalcy, mostly because people could not see anyone getting sick around them. This stiff upper lip was less about resolve in the face of adversity and more about a failure to imagine how bad things could get when the Dormigen supply was depleted, a contingency that most people now did not think was going to happen. The White House had also worked aggressively to make Capellaviridae seem less scary. Acting on the recommendation of the Strategist, senior officials had compared Capellaviridae to influenza at every possible turn. (To be more accurate, they compared it to “the flu,” which focus groups found far less scary than “influenza.”) For example, the day before, with the press clamoring for projections and details, the Communications Director had declared during an interview, “It is crucial to remember that even if untreated, Capellaviridae is no more harmful than a serious case of the flu.”
This statement was both technically accurate and entirely misleading. The public had no conception of how serious a bad strain of influenza could be. Before the advent of Dormigen, a nasty global influenza outbreak could kill a million people, including tens of thousands in the United States. There were a few media references to the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918, one of the worst pandemics in modern history, but “the flu” was the image cemented in most minds. Ironically, most Americans still believed that Capellaviridae could be contracted via contact with other humans (like the flu), but the initial panic over the disease had subsided. Schools were open again and attendance at public events was drifting back toward normal. (The Washington Nationals stadium had been only about a quarter full during the spontaneous burst of patriotism in response to the President’s takeoff from Honolulu.) I watched the guys unloading bread for a few minutes and then retrieved my omelet when the microwave made its loud, annoying beep.
I do not want to overdramatize what happened next. I was hungry enough that I made short work of the omelet. I was getting up to make some toast when I got a text from Jenna. “Good sleep?” it said. I was elated to hear from her, and like anyone who has ever flirted by text, I carefully crafted my reply: “Excellent. Ice-cream cone later?”
I waited nervously for the response: “Definitely. See you at NIH?”
Jenna’s text had pushed that crazy German terrorist incident to the front of my mind. The ice-cream cone is what had made it so bizarre. What I realized explicitly as I sat at the dining room table was that the eccentric scientist was entirely protected as long as he was the only one who could procure the antidote. That was his innovation.
Other terrorists plant bombs and demand ransom, but the strategy has limitations. The bombs must be in a population center, which increases the likelihood that they are detected and defused. Or the area can be evacuated, rendering the bomb harmless (to people). Meanwhile, the terrorist is always at risk of being killed by the authorities; they do not need him alive to deactivate his explosive device. By introducing an unknown pathogen, however, the perpetrator guarantees his safety, particularly if the antidote is not commonly known. What was so surreal about the German scientist asking for his double-scoop ice-cream cone was his certainty that the authorities would not harm him. He could stash the antidote anywhere—in a safe-deposit box or buried in a public park—and the authorities would likely never find it if he were killed. In fact, we now know that the CEO, feverish and throwing up from his psychosomatic illness, was pleading with German authorities: “Do not kill him! I need him alive!”
These thoughts rushed through my mind as I sat at the dining room table. One can quibble with my analysis of terrorism, but that is not the point. My mind turned almost immediately to Capellaviridae and the North American dust mite. The most perfectly adapted species find some way to make themselves valuable to the broader ecosystem, thereby helping to ensure their own survival. Think about those little birds that perch inside the mouths of crocodiles and clean their huge, dangerous teeth. Everybody leaves happy. Evolution has a way of creating these synergistic relationships: bizarre creatures that interact in mutually beneficial ways. But what if nature had served up something different in the case of the dust mite, Capellaviridae, and humans? What if their relationship was something more akin to that of the German CEO and the mad scientist: extortion? Wouldn’t it be possible—and entirely consistent with everything we know about evolution—for one species to essentially hold another hostage? You continue to provide for my basic needs or I will kill you. Nature offers up innumerable examples of toxins and venoms wielded by bizarre creatures either to hunt prey or to protect themselves from predators. Couldn’t such weapons be wielded more creatively?