Dying to Live by Kim Baldwin & Xenia Alexiou

Author:Kim Baldwin & Xenia Alexiou [Baldwin, Kim & Alexiou, Xenia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781602822009
Amazon: 160282200X
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2011-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Geneva, Switzerland

October 20

The director-general of the World Health Organization had assigned two people full-time to feed information about the H1N6 virus into WHOSIS. The Statistical Information System, an interactive database, was their best way to keep up with the growing spread of cases in many of the organization’s one hundred ninety-three member countries.

Ten days into the pandemic, the statistics were staggering. Sixty-three countries were now reporting cases of the mysterious virus, and more than two million fatalities had been recorded. The WHO’s estimated death toll nearly doubled overnight, when they added the names of victims who had only been suspected of dying of the virus. Most of these reports were trickling in from third-world countries and isolated areas, where overwhelmed clinics and hospitals had neither the time nor the resources for accurate diagnostics. Even in the developed countries, it was still impossible to confirm the H1N6 infections through lab tests. Their record-keeping was imperfect because it was based on symptoms, location, and the known rate of the progression of the disease.

She hoped that was about to change. Several of the world’s best labs were trying to isolate the stealth component of the virus through blood tests on people who were at the highest risk of having the disease but had not yet developed symptoms. They were the family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers of the dead and dying.

Though she tried valiantly to keep her focus on the myriad of tasks demanding her attention, she checked the latest reports from China every half hour or so. The explosive outbreak there was particularly worrisome, with a quarter of a million cases reported, and the spread was marching rapidly southward toward her home village.

Martial law had been declared in twenty-two nations, many acting because of widespread riots, looting, and hoarding. Borders throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America were being closed to help contain the outbreak. Public gatherings were banned in many regions, and quarantines were springing up everywhere. Several major airlines had cancelled flights to the most severely affected countries, and some were considering a temporary shutdown of business altogether. People were afraid to travel, causing so many cancellations that planes were often flying with only a handful of passengers, and major airports like Amsterdam’s Schiphol, London’s Heathrow, and Kennedy in New York were virtually empty. Media Web sites crashed regularly because of the flood of panicked people seeking information on the virus.

The transportation of goods and services had stopped nearly everywhere. Surgical masks and over-the-counter flu medications had sold out globally in the first couple days of the crisis, and grocery shelves in the stores that remained open were virtually bare. Tens of millions were heeding the WHO’s advice to remain in their homes and avoid all contact with other people.

It was only a matter of days, the director-general thought, before panic ensued in a way that hadn’t been seen since the Spanish-flu outbreak of 1918, when a third of the world’s population had been affected and as many as one hundred million people had died.

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