“Just a few more minutes, Mr. President,” Sutton answered, turning his computer on. As he sat down, Jackson plugged in a monitor cable to Sutton’s laptop.
Arranging his stuff around his laptop, Sutton glanced up to see people ending calls and grabbing notepads. He was shocked to see several already reading the report he had just passed out. “Anytime you’re ready, Dr. Sutton,” the President said, hanging up his phone.
“Yes sir,” Sutton said, tapping his keyboard. “As many of you are aware, we have confirmed cases in nineteen major cities inside the United States,” Sutton reported.
“How many confirmed cases?” someone asked.
“As of nine this morning, we have one hundred and four here in the US,” Sutton answered, looking up for who had spoken.
“That was from me,” Temple, the Secretary of Treasury said and Sutton turned to him. “That seems like a low number, so we can stop worrying, right?”
“No, sir,” Sutton huffed. “That’s a terrifying number. We are still testing another three thousand, four hundred some odd samples. We are expecting another two thousand to be delivered today.”
Everyone turned to look down the table at Sutton. “Let me clarify, we went from one in LA to sixteen the next day,” Sutton said, tapping the keyboard and a map of the US popped up on screens around the room with the nineteen cities marked in red. “The next day, forty-seven and the day after that, two hundred and nine,” Sutton said glumly.
“We can’t keep a lid on this much longer,” Paterson groaned, looking back down at the report.
“I’m surprised you have been able to keep it off the major news stations this long,” Sutton admitted.
“How is a vaccine coming?” the President asked.
Sutton looked up with a long face. “Very slowly,” he answered. “The virus is lethal to chickens, so we have to breed off chickens that are immune until we get some that can lay eggs that we can then use to develop a vaccine. Chickens have a higher mortality than we do at ninety-five percent, but they don’t always pass that immunity on in their DNA.”
“Whoa,” a woman shouted out, holding up her hand. “What is the mortality for humans?” she asked, dropping her hand down and started flipping through the report.
“Ninety percent without medical help,” Sutton informed her and there were many gasps around the table.
Leaning toward Sutton, “That’s Ginger Stringer, Secretary of Health and Human Services,” Jackson whispered, then turned to the table. “Everyone, let me clarify,” Jackson said. “By ‘medical help’, everyone has to be placed on a ventilator to breathe for the patient. I’ve talked to several doctors who have and are currently caring for the patients, and they are telling me about pulling liters of fluid from the lungs of those infected in hours.”
“So we are able to treat them?” the President asked.
Turning to Sutton, Jackson nodded. “Yes, we can treat them, Mr. President, but even with medical care over eighty percent still die. Medical care only improves your chance of survival slightly,” Sutton reported and the president slumped down in his chair.
“Tell us what you can about this virus but please remember, we aren’t doctors,” the President sighed.
Tapping his keyboard, everyone saw dark rods on the screens around the room. “This is our killer, but it’s not like any H5N1 we’ve ever seen. This one is designated A/duck/Hong Kong-China/RU-8/22(H5N1). When this is over I can tell you, there will be an H5α classification added,” Sutton said, looking around the table. “I won’t bore you with the details on the structure, but this is unlike any H5N1 anyone even dreamed of.”
“We’ve traced it to a village 100km northeast of Hong Kong,” Sutton said, looking down at his notes. “We thought a Lei Wei was patient zero, but he wasn’t. There were six others in the village infected before him but it was Mr. Wei’s son, Zhang Wei, who delivered it out of the small village. Zhang is a senior executive for Tong Shipping and there was an annual board meeting of the top thirty executives,” Sutton stopped and tapped his keyboard. Everyone turned to the screens and saw cities around the world light up.
“These are where the executives came from and that is the outbreak points for each country. We have confirmed on…,” Sutton paused, looking at his notes again. “Yes, Mr. James Taylor, who was mentioned at the last meeting was there, and we’ve tracked down people on his flight. By the time he reached London, Mr. Taylor infected over eighty people. But one day after returning from China, Mr. James Taylor flew to the US, Mexico, Brazil, and Spain in forty-eight hours and then returned back to London.”
“How is it spread?”
Watching Sutton glance around the table for the speaker, the President spoke up. “If you haven’t talked to Dr. Sutton before, announce who you are when you ask a question.”
“Sorry,” a man said. “Winston Vander, Secretary of Commerce.”
Looking at Vander, “Airborne and droplets, or what most call contact,” Sutton answered.
“I’ve heard all kinds of contagious periods, can you clarify?” Vander asked.
“Incubation is thirty to forty-eight hours after contact, but the problem is the host doesn’t show any symptoms for seven to ten days with six days being the mean,” Sutton answered and then sighed. “But in that time, they are spreading it.”
“What are the symptoms?” Stringer asked.
“First is an itchy nose and sneezing. That usually shows up two days before onset of a very mild fever, followed by cough days later,” Sutton said, taking a deep breath. “When the coughing starts, the patient’s lungs start filling with fluid. Death usually occurs six to twenty-four hours later.”
“Oh, fuck,” someone cried out.
“I said a lot more than that,” Sutton nodded, tapping his computer and the screens filled with equations. “These are all
