Pandemic

"Meaning?" She spoke with such confident authority that Haldane was grateful to share the privileged information with her, as if unloading a secret he didn't want to bear alone.

"The clinical syndrome is worse than SARS," he said. "Infected patients develop a sudden severe pneumonia often leading to multi-organ failure and death in a couple of days. Sometimes faster. And it's an ugly death, too. Not all that different from the philoviruses like Ebola, except without as much hemorrhaging. The mortality rate of ARCS is at least four or five times that of SARS."

She didn't reply for a moment. Haldane thought he heard the sound of her teeth tapping. "So how is it better than SARS?" she asked, her voice monotone.

"It's so damn fast. The incubation period is only a few days, maximum five. And once sick, the patients either die or recover fully in under a week."

Another pause, more tapping. "That doesn't sound so much better."

"From an epidemiological point of view, it's a big advantage," he said. "It makes for a much shorter quarantine period than with SARS. Five days versus twelve. And we don't have to worry about latent spread. Unless of course the virus mutates again."

"I suppose," Savard said, sounding unconvinced.

"But the biggest advantage is this bug's relatively low contagiousness," Haldane said. "Unlike SARS we've seen minimal spread to health-care workers. And if this were a common influenza strain, it would have escaped Gansu by now. We would never have been able to contain it."

"You have contained it?" she asked pointedly.

He didn't answer right away. "It seems to be contained in Jiayuguan City," he said, hedging. "There have not been any new case reports in over forty-eight hours. It's too early to tell about the more rural regions."

"That's great news, Noah."

"Maybe for you," Haldane said. "You haven't seen what it's like here."

"So tell me."

"The government set up a quarantine that looks more like a ghetto. They fenced in ten thousand people behind guns and barbed wire. So far 276 people have died, most of them young adults or children. It's like something out of a nightmare. Ambulances rush in, body bags are dragged out. The fear is so thick in the air you can almost touch it. It's awful."

"Sounds awful," Gwen said with genuine empathy. "But also necessary. Imagine those same ghettos in cities all over the world, if you hadn't stopped the spread in China."

Haldane grunted a laugh. "I didn't have much to do with it."

"Jean Nantal tells me otherwise." She forced the praise on him. "He says that you convinced the officials to sacrifice the local livestock. And he says that was the key to stopping this virus."

"I wish I were as confident as you." Haldane sighed. "I am not so sure we've seen the last of ARCS or the Gansu Flu or the Killer Flu or whatever the hell you want to call it."

"Why?" Savard asked.

"Maybe I'm just being dramatic." Haldane rubbed the rest of the sleep out of his face. "But we have been incredibly lucky not to see any spread beyond this province. Almost too lucky. You understand?"

"Not necessarily," she said. "Maybe the Chinese have learned from the SARS experience."

"Clearly." He stood up with his phone to his ear and stretched. "With the way they run the farms around here they're going to need to learn a lot more if they don't want to be responsible for Armageddon."

She swallowed. "Noah, my biggest concern lies in the potential for weaponizing this virus."

"I wouldn't recommend it."

She ignored the quip. "How easy do you think it would be for someone to get their hands on the virus."

"You mean from a lab?" he asked.

"From anywhere," she said.

"I don't imagine it would be too difficult," he said. "Who would want it? No. Don't answer that. I have enough trouble sleeping." He sighed. "Okay, your question would be better answered by our microbiologist Milly Yuen, but let me take a stab at it. This virus is more fastidious than most influenza, which explains the delay in identifying him. But at his core he is a member of the same family.. Influenza is easily incubated in chicken eggs or for that matter live animals like pigs and certain primates. I imagine you could use. the blood or other body fluid products of an infected patient to propagate the virus. From there…"

She didn't comment, so Haldane added, "If it makes you feel any better, I haven't bumped into Osama bin Laden on the streets of Jiayuguan City."

"That's a big relief," she groaned. "When will you know for sure whether the virus is contained in Gansu?"

"If there are no new cases, anywhere, in the next week, then I will sleep a whole lot better."

"Me, too."

They said their good-byes, promising to touch base with updates and any new developments, but Haldane suspected that she no more intended than he did to follow up on their conversation.

* * *