it synthetically. It might provide immunity for a few weeks.”
The vice president’s impressive jaw clenched in frustration. “Can he say that there is a promising treatment—”
“It’s not a treatment. At best it offers a few weeks of—”
The vice president held up a cautioning hand, indicating his displeasure at Bartlett’s interruption. “—and that real progress is being made. I think we’ll leave it at that.” The vice president assembled the briefing papers and lifted them over his shoulder, knowing that an aide was there to snatch them out of his hand.
“We haven’t tried it in humans yet,” Bartlett protested. “We’re running it through ferrets.”
“Tell me one thing,” the vice president said. “Are the ferrets alive?”
“Most of them, but the experiment is still ongoing—”
“More than there would be if they hadn’t taken this stuff?”
“That’s impossible to say. We don’t have the mortality data yet.”
“And you would have that when?”
“In about two weeks.”
The vice president pursed his lips. “Why not human trials?” he asked. “Why not now?”
“It will take several months to make a product suitable for human use, and even then a single monoclonal antibody might not be enough to prevent a rapidly changing virus from escaping. So it’s high risk. Meantime, you should consider making a priority list saying who gets the antibody serum and in what order. It’s going to be really scarce. Members of the government? First responders? Children? Military? Pregnant women? National Guard? A lottery? These are choices you’ll have to make.”
“Agree that we need to do this. But no on the lottery or releasing the schedule. It’d be a political mess. We should keep the vaccine secret and—”
“It’s not a vaccine, sir,” Bartlett reminded him. “And remember, after several weeks people would need another dose unless we have a real vaccine by then.”
The vice president glared at Bartlett with all the force his telegenic blue eyes could summon. “We’ll keep whatever secret until we’ve secured the most vital elements of our society, so people aren’t struggling over questions like how many children are going to die while the bosses are getting their booster shots.”
“We’ve got a raging epidemic in Philadelphia, only two hours away from here, so you can understand we’re in kind of a hurry,” Tildy said, in her most courteous voice.
“We have influenza in Washington as well, ma’am.”
“Jesus,” the vice president said. “When did this happen?”
“The reporting came in this morning from three hospitals in the city. A total of nineteen cases so far. If it develops as quickly as it did in Philadelphia, it will be a full-blown epidemic in three to five days.”
Tildy was silent. She looked around the table and saw the despair in the faces of the deputies, which she was sure was reflected in her own expression as well.
“The good news,” Bartlett said, and suddenly everyone leaned forward, “the good news is that, if we’re lucky, we could have an effective vaccine at scale in about six months, hopefully in time for the second wave.”
“The what?”
“Typically, with a pandemic, you have two or three big waves of contagion before it settles down and becomes the normal flu you get every year. That lasts until the next pandemic comes along. So, if this one is like the 1918 flu, the really big wave will hit in October. But of course we don’t know what this one will do.”
The silence was broken by a loud sneeze. Everyone gasped.
“It’s allergies,” the agency man said defensively.
“You say this is a completely novel disease,” Tildy said. “What are the chances that it’s man-made? Something the geniuses cooked up in a lab?”
“We haven’t been able to determine whether it’s an engineered virus,” Bartlett responded. “It doesn’t have the usual sequence characteristics of a virus cooked up in a lab, but it’s also not something we’ve ever seen in nature.”
“Who has the capacity to make such a thing?”
“That’s not my area, ma’am.”
Tildy looked at the agency man. “Russia is at the top of the list,” he said.
“The Russian people have been told that Kongoli is an American plot,” State said. “They’re hysterical over this.”
“Well, is it?” Tildy asked.
The question lay on the table before the vice president finally said, “Don’t be ridiculous.”
20
We Treat Each Other
On a computer in Prince Majid’s Jeddah palace, Henry studied the concentration of Kongoli outbreaks on a world map. In the month since the Mecca outbreak, the disease had spread widely, despite the quarantine. Red in various hues indicated the presence of the disease. Saudi Arabia and Iraq were crimson. The infection spread