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Since yesterday's installment, there have been 7 Ebola scare incidents. Two of them, both in Spain, resulted in the quarantine of a total of six individuals. One, in New York, involved an elderly man on a flight from Nigeria. He reportedly vomited mid-flight, and expired before the plane could land at JFK — one of the busiest airports in the world.
In what I regard as a stunning display of the hubris I talked about in part 1, the CDC boarded the plane (leaving the door from the jetway to the terminal wide open), gave a "cursory" inspection of the body, declared that it was not Ebola, and allowed everybody to leave.
When Patrick Sawyer flew to Lagos, Nigeria on the 8th of September, he brought Ebola with him. In fact, he went to Nigeria against the wishes of the medical staff at the hospital he was leaving in Liberia. Doctors in Nigeria treated him, at first, for malaria, because he claimed he had not come into contact with Ebola. Malaria does not communicate directly between humans, so the use of protective gear would have been minimal. Sure enough, Sawyer's hubris cost the lives of 19 Nigerians who perished because they tried to save Sawyer's life.
With those grim thoughts in mind, I present part 3:
October 22, 2014 7:45 pm
Steve bolted up from sleep. He'd been having a nightmare, and he was soaked in sweat. The room was dark, and something was beeping next to the head of the bed. As he looked around, the first thing he noticed was a window on the door, with small wires embedded in it. That was odd, because Patty's bedroom didn't have anything like that. "Where am I?" he thought to himself.
He turned his head the other way, and found the source of the beeping. "Oh - I'm in a hospital." His head started pounding. "What the hell happened? Was I in a wreck?" He felt nauseous, and rolled onto his side. Before he could piece any more of the puzzle together, his mouth opened and a stream of vomit came forth. "Jesus!" He frantically searched for the call button. The beeping's pace increased. There it is. He repeatedly tapped the button.
When the door opened, he was confused to see the Michelin Man in the doorway.
"What the hell is going on?"
"Mr Thomas, you've been unconscious for 2 days. You're in Emory hospital, in Atlanta, Georgia. You were transferred here because you've contracted Ebola. Your girlfriend, Ms Klein, is in the next room."
Steve stared in disbelief. He turned his head towards the vomit, and recoiled when he realized it was mostly blood. "Holy shit! Am I going to die?"
The Michelin Man did not have great bedside manner. "Probably. There's a good 80% chance of that, given your lack of response to the infusion of Dr Brantley's blood serum we gave you. If you make it through the night, your odds improve."
"Oh..." Steve laid his body back down, fighting the urge to cry. He wasn't sure why, but he didn't want the Michelin Man to think him any less of a man.
As he sat there, confused and alone - except for this stack-of-tires which was now using a shovel to scoop up his vomit - he tried to remember what had led up to this. He had a sense that he had flown recently, and a vague recollection of fluorescent lights passing overhead, while... aliens? No, that made no sense. "It must have been people wearing haz-mat suits," he thought to himself. "Oh... that's what's going on! That's not the Michelin Man. It's a guy in a haz-mat suit. This one's puffy, though. Why?" That last word suddenly became something to focus on for Steve, and his mind repeated it: "Why? Why? Why?" It became a mental mantra, which he synchronized to the beeping of the heart monitor.
October 22, 2014 8:30 pm, Decatur, Georgia
"Shit. Guess he wasn't that strong, after all. Okay - start writing the press release. Steve Thomas fought valiantly, but finally succumbed to Ebola Virus Disease at 8:!5 pm. His girlfriend, Patty Klein, remains in critical condition. Amber Vinson is in stable condition, and only being kept here at this point out of an abundance of caution."
Doctor Ravi Kumar had no accent; he had been born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. Despite what television would have us believe, most urban dwellers in the South don't actually have "Southern Drawls," let alone that exaggerated Red Scarlett accent that so many Hollywood productions portray. Doctor Kumar actually sounded a lot like Tom Brokaw. He had been working long hours since it was first announced that Vinson would be transferred to his isolation ward. He wanted to be damn sure that Emory continued to live up to its name and not make any of the mistakes which Texas Presbyterian had made.
So far, things were going fairly well, despite Mr. Thomas's expiration. Although Ms. Klein was in critical condition, she showed signs of heading toward convalescence - her breathing had calmed and her fever had come down a half a degree. She hadn't thrown up in over a day, too, so it looked like she'd turned the corner. If he had to guess, he'd put her odds at 50% right now. Which was pretty good, considering yesterday he thought she was a goner. But then, this morning, he thought that Mr. Thomas had a pretty good chance of surviving. That guy was in peak shape - a real athlete.
Dr Kumar went to the doctor's lounge, and sprawled out on the sofa. He turned on the TV. "Oh man, the news is going to go ballistic when they hear about Mr Thomas," he muttered to himself. "Okay, Megyn Kelly, what are you talking about today? Still whining about the lack of a travel ban?" He tuned the TV to Fox News.
BONNNNNG! "And we have a Fox News Alert with breaking news now that Texas Presbyterian hospital in Dallas has taken in a total of EIGHT patients in the past hour, all with suspected Ebola," Julie Banderas reported. "This as New York City's Mount Sinai isolates three patients, and Denver's Porter Adventist admits two patients."
Dr Kumar sat up. He had been expecting inconsequential talking head nonsense, not synchronized suspected Ebola cases. There had been a ridiculous number of suspected Ebola cases since the beginning of the outbreak, and 95% had turned out to be false alarms. On one day, October 16, there had been ten suspected patients, and all had been negative - even that guy who flew into JFK. He felt a bit uneasy, though. This was thirteen patients in one day, and as far as he could tell, they were all at the same time. What the fuck was going on?
October 22, 2014 9:00 pm, New York, New York
"All three? That can't be right. Test them again. Your samples or your equipment are contaminated. Sterilize everything"
October 23, 2014 10:35 am, Dallas, TX
Gertrude O'Reilly could not understand where she had gotten Ebola from. She was in Texas Presbyterian's isolation ward, and was surprised to see that the nurses treating her were covered, head-to-toe, in garbage bags. "We're out of hazmat suits," they told her. "We're having to improvise, again."
The CDC investigator, though, was in a full haz-mat suit. He had a hood over his head that made it a little difficult to understand him unless he yelled. He had been interviewing patients since 7:00 this morning. "You're sure you've had no contact with Patricia Klein, Steven Thomas, Amber Vinson, Nina Pham, or Thomas Duncan? You're positive?"
"I may be old, but I'm not senile yet. Hell, if it wasn't for this Eloba, or whatever it's called, I'd probably live another 20 years! Look: I've got a daily routine: I get up, I get dressed, I go to IHop for eggs and bacon, I go to the senior center for a few hours, I go home. Sometimes my grandkids come to visit, but it's been weeks since they've been by. Their mother is such a germophobe. Would you believe she took her kids out of school the day that Thomas Duncan was announced to be sick? She's been homeschooling her kids and staying inside for almost a month now! It's crazy - she's got about as much risk as I do of catching Eloba."
"Ma'am, was there any break in your routine in the past few weeks? Anything out of the ordinary?"
"I don't think so. The other day, Beatrice told me that the senior center had hired a new gardener. Manuel, I think his name is. She said she wanted to seduce him. That Beatrice - she's a bit of a whore, you know. You think she could've had the sex with Manuel and caught the Eloba from him? Given it to me? That little old bitch!"
"No, ma'am. That doesn't sound very likely..."
"Well, you know, she told me that back in the sixties, she caught gonorrhea twice. From TWO different men! It's a wonder she didn't get that AIDS stuff and die decades ago. And now she's gone and given me Eloba."
"Ma'am, we really don't think Beatrice transferred Ebola to you from the gardener..."
"Well, how do you suppose I got it, then?"
"Okay... Let's come back to that. What sort of medications are you taking?"
"Medications? Well, that's a pretty long list. Can't you just look on my chart? It's all in there, I'm sure. Maybe it was that Kelly. You know, she's an 'Artiste.' Always making clay pots and stuff. Why, I'll bet you she got some dirty African clay to spin, and then she touched me. That damned Kelly. I never liked her. She's so pretentious. 'Oooh, look at my pot I made! Isn't it just delightful, with these little smiley faces and flowers I carved in the side? I'm going to the farrrrmer's market this weekend, and I'll bet I can sell it for five dollars!' You know, that would barely cover the Fiber-One I bought the other day. Can you believe that stuff costs FOUR dollars and sixty eight cents? Before that Obama took office it was Three dollars and twenty-two cents. I tell you, inflation's going to ruin this country before Eloba does."
"Ma'am?"
"Kelly. That little bitch. I tell you what - after I get out of here, I'm gonna give her a piece of my mind."
"Ma'am! You said you bought some Fiber-One the other day?"
"Yes - yes I did. I had exact change, too. There was a damned brat behind me. Didn't even want to wait for me to fish out three pennies from my purse. You know, he sneezed on me! Little bastard. I hope he's got Eloba. That was... When was that? Oh - three days ago. That's right. I was late heading to the senior center and almost missed out on the first round of Gin Rummy."
The CDC investigator suspected this was Steven Thomas, and that he not only had Ebola, but he was dead.
"Ma'am, was this him?"
He fumbled through the manilla folder to retrieve a printing of a photo of Mr Thomas. The gloves did not make this easy.
"I don't know. Could be. Yeah. I think so. That bastard. He was tapping his feet while I counted my change. The nerve."
"Ma'am, this is Steven Thomas. He died last night at about 8:15pm, from Ebola in Atlanta."
"Atlanta? I haven't been to Atlanta in years! You know, the last time I was there was with my grand-kids. We had a layover coming back from Disney. Six hours in that airport. With my grand-kids! Can you imagine?"
The investigator got up, relieved to figure out that she had caught Ebola from patient four, and not an as-yet unknown patient. There was still a chance of nipping this thing. He hadn't gotten any news about the patients in Denver yet - he was hopeful that was just hysteria, which was way more contagious than Ebola. He was trying to figure out how the three in New York had caught it. Maybe they just flew in? He didn't really know much about them.
It took him 35 minutes to remove his haz-mat suit. He'd taken to wearing adult diapers whenever he put on the suit, because sometimes you just have to go. He sent an email on his iPad to the head investigator with his findings: all eight of the patients had contact with Mr Thomas, even the little old lady. He would have to come back and begin tracing all of their contacts after lunch.
He got into the rental car, and asked Siri where he could get some sushi. Sushi in Dallas - seemed kind of odd, but he really had a yen for it today. He asked Siri for directions, and started driving off. He turned onto Walnut Hill Lane, and turned on the radio.
"Four patients were admitted to Baylor University Medical center this morning, when a single mother and three children — one of them an infant — came in to the emergency room. All four were presenting with Ebola-like symptoms. Baylor says it's likely just the flu, but they have been put in isolation out of an abundance of caution..."
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