Pandemic

Streicher adjusted the Lennon-style round eyeglasses, which highlighted his striking blue-gray eyes. "You understand, Dr. McLeod, about sectorizing outbreaks, no?" he asked with a hint of condescension. He circled the red zones with a finger. "There have been no confirmed cases outside of these. Correct, Mr. Choy?"

Choy nodded vigorously.

Streicher pointed at the blue line. "As of yesterday, the local authorities have quarantined this entire zone within the blue."

"Quarantine, of course," McLeod said. "I remember the wonderful quarantine in Toronto during SARS. Suspected cases were told to stay at home and wear masks, but some of them went to work anyway."

The health officer shook his head. "No one leaves," Choy said emphatically. "Army guards against it."

"Lord love a repressive dictatorship during an epidemic!" McLeod said. "Makes our job so much easier."

Streicher nodded as if McLeod were serious. "The quarantine should contain the spread within the city. The incubation period is estimated at three to five days. We will know in seventy-two to ninety-six hours whether there has been spread beyond the blue."

"When was the first case seen in Jiayuguan City?" Haldane asked.

"Five days ago," Choy squeaked in a high-pitched voice.

"And how many cases so far?"

Dr. Huang spoke to Yuen in Mandarin. "Seventy confirmed, forty-five suspected, and twenty-six dead," she translated for him.

"Five days and less than two hundred cases," Haldane thought aloud. "With the short incubation period, I would have expected greater spread by now. It's a safe bet that this virus does not exhibit airborne spread."

Even after the translation, Choy stared blankly at Haldane. With Yuen acting as the go-between, Haldane explained. "For all infections, there are three routes of potential spread. First, direct contact. HIV or Hepatitis B are examples of viruses requiring intimate contact. Second is droplet spread like with the common cold or flu. When an infected person sneezes or coughs, large mucous droplets carry the virus from person to person. However, these droplets are relatively big and fall to the ground quickly so you need close and immediate contact. The final and most feared route of spread is airborne. Smallpox and measles are viral examples. By coughing or sneezing, people aerosolize tiny particles. These particles can linger in the air for hours or spread remotely via ventilation systems and so on. It means that people can be infected without direct contact to a contagious person."

"Ja," agreed Streicher. "Airborne spread is an epidemiological catastrophe. But this ARCS looks only to have droplet spread."

Eyes wide, Choy asked in English, "This is very good?"

"Bloody marvelous," McLeod said. "As it stands, we might not die for weeks."

Haldane glanced sidelong at his colleague. "Not helping, Duncan."

Milly Yuen held up a hand tentatively. "I have something to report."

"Please, Milly…" Haldane held out his palm.

"I heard from the WHO Influenza Surveillance Lab in Hong Kong an hour ago," she said quietly. "They've isolated the virus in the serum samples."

Two hands on the table, McLeod pushed himself up out of his seat. "Don't keep us hanging, Milly!"

"As we assumed, this virus is closely related to influenza," Yuen said.

Haldane folded his arm across his chest. "But it's not influenza?"

Yuen shrugged so imperceptibly that her shoulders barely flickered. "It is a subtype, but it is not influenza A or B."

"What other kinds of influenza are there?" Streicher asked.

Kai Huang dropped the pen and looked up at the others. "The Spanish Flu," he said in English.

Haldane shook his head. "I wondered about that, too, but I don't think this is the Spanish Flu. At least, not the exact same virus that caused the 1918 pandemic."

"How can you be so sure?" Streicher asked.

"Because that pandemic swept the planet in four months in an age before commercial air travel," Haldane said. "One billion people were infected. Greater than fifty percent of the world's population at the time. If we were dealing with the same bug, the genie would already be out of the bottle. Clearly, ARCS is not as contagious."

"How do you know that the infection control measures haven't been better this time?" Streicher asked.

"Or maybe the last time, the Spanish Flu banged around some remote Chinese province for a few years before going global." McLeod pointed a bony finger at Haldane. "Could be the same with ARCS? Like some Australian teenager, it might just be chomping at the bit to head out and party around the world."

Haldane shook his head slowly. "It's already been in this city for almost a week and they've seen fewer than two hundred cases. The Spanish Flu would have swept the city like wildfire by now." He tapped the table. "What's more, even in 1918 the mortality rate for the Spanish Flu was only two percent. Whereas ARCS is far deadlier. It's killing twenty-five percent of its young, healthy victims." He shook his head. "Twenty-five percent!"