The Jakarta Pandemic

by Steven Konkoly

  “Can you clear that branch? I think if you dislodge it from the dodger, it’ll fall over the side on its own. I’m need to inspect the dinghy and start the motor,” he yelled.

  “Got it,” she said.

  He saw her walk along the starboard side of the boat and cross over to examine the branch. Satisfied that she had the branch situation under control, he stepped into the dinghy and pressed down on each side of the craft with both hands. The cold PVC exterior gave slightly to the pressure applied, which was consistent with early morning inflation levels. The colder outside air temperatures caused a slight contraction of the air inside each chamber. He quickly wiped the dirt from the sides, before turning his attention to the motor.

  He had battled off and on for nearly four years with motor, having considered a watery grave on more than one occasion for the temperamental collection of metal and plastic parts. It should be simple. Open the air vent. Open the fuel valve. Open the choke. Start the engine. Except it had never been that easy. In four years, he could count the number of times it started without incident, on his middle finger, which he often lifted in protest against the manufacturer of the motor. Alex ran through his mental checklist and took a deep breath. He really needed this thing to work. Their lives would depend on it.

  He pulled the starter cord and the motor sprang to life, puttering quietly at idle. He revved the throttle for a moment, letting the engine warm, before pushing the choke in. Everything worked perfectly, which meant that he had wasted his one good start for the year on a test. He considered leaving the motor running, but decided against it. They had enough time to get the motor running again, if they decided to abandon the boat and take shelter on the island. He stopped the motor, leaving everything in position for a quick start.

  As he stepped onto the sailboat, he heard the branch fall away, followed by a quick scream. He flashed his light forward, searching for Kate, but couldn’t immediately find her on the deck. Shit. She fell overboard. He started to reach for the Lifesling preserver attached to the starboard rails, when Kate appeared from behind the mast.

  “Fucking thing almost took me in with it!” she yelled.

  “You alright?” he said.

  “I’m fine. A few scratches,” she said, starting to walk back along the deck.

  “Stay there. I need to check the anchorage,” he said.

  He made his way forward and met her at the bow.

  “We need to talk while I do this,” he said, reaching through the forward rails to grip the nylon line stretched into the water several feet below.

  “That air blast came from the same direction as the flash of light. Took eight minutes to arrive. Only an massive explosion could create something like that…”

  “Boston,” she muttered.

  “I’m pretty certain that’s not the case. The wind correlated with the direction of the flash, which puts the explosion in the Bay of Maine,” he said, tugging on the anchor line.

  “I hope so,” she said.

  “Me too, for Ryan’s sake, but if the explosion was over water, we could be hit by a tsunami. Even a twenty-foot wave could sweep over the island without a problem. We need to decide whether to stay onboard and ride out whatever crests the island, or abandon the boat for the concrete lookout tower near the cove.”

  “I don’t think we should leave the boat. If it get’s swept away, we’re stuck here,” said Kate.

  “I agree, but we have no idea how big the wave will be. Remember those videos of the tsunamis in Thailand and Japan? Solid walls of water travelled inland for miles,” he said.

  “How long do we have?” she said.

  “I have no idea. If it took the wind eight minutes to get here, I’d guess we have at least another thirty minutes. The anchor feels fine,” he said, standing up on the bow.

  “We might not have a problem at all, honey. From what I remember reading, tsunami waves are barely noticeable out at sea. The problem occurs when the wave hits shallow water. Something about the wave speed decreasing and the rest of the wave piling up behind it. We’re several miles from the mainland and this is a small island. A tiny blip in the ocean for a tsunami. It might not rise up enough to fuck with us.”

  “Then we stay on the boat,” she said.

  “Let’s get the boat ready for the worst. We’ll keep the engine running in case we break free of the anchorage and have to maneuver,” said Alex, starting toward the cockpit.

  “I almost wonder if we should haul in the anchor. If a wave makes it over the island, the anchor won’t hold. If we get swept out of here, it could get stuck on something and cause a bigger problem,” she said.

  He thought about what she said and flashed his light at the anchor line tied to the forward cleat. If they experienced the situation she described, he couldn’t imagine climbing forward to cut the anchor line with the boat pitching violently. He could remove the line from the cleat and run it back to the cockpit, where one of them could cut the line and permanently release the anchor if necessary.

  “Start securing the boat for heavy seas. I’ll run the anchor line back to the cockpit. I’m glad you thought of that,” he said.

  “I’m good for an idea or two,” she said, brushing against him on her way back.

  “That’s one more than I’m good for,” he said, grabbing her hand.

  “We’ll be fine, hon. I’ll be in Boston tomorrow, picking up Ryan. Nothing to it. We’ve been through worse.”

  “I know. I’m just scared. We don’t know what’s going on out there. He’s alone in a new place. No friends. Nothing,” she said, nodding toward the western horizon.

  “He knows what to do. Ryan’s the least of our worries. He’ll probably be waiting for us at the house when we get back,” he said.

  She buried her head in his chest and didn’t respond. He decided not to push the feigned optimism any further. As a mother, she was entitled to worry more than the rest of them, and he had no intention of diminishing this right. The sailboat swung lazily to face a more easterly direction, raising his internal alarms. The sudden sound of rustling leaves caused him to squeeze Kate tightly. They wouldn’t have time to escape a sudden gust like the one that before. A stiff wind squall blew directly out of the east for a few seconds, causing them let go of each other and grab the nearest deck mounted handrail. No flash preceded the airwave, which indicated that the explosion had occurred over the visible horizon. The only thing due east of Jewell Island was Nova Scotia. When the wind completely died, he stared in the direction of the first explosion, wondering if they should reconsider the option to take shelter in one of the island’s solidly constructed, World War Two era lookout posts.

  Background Material Cut from first draft of The Jakarta Pandemic

  A Brief History of the Avian Flu Pandemic of 2008

  During the spring of 2008, World Health Organization officials received alarming information, acquired from an undisclosed source deep within the Chinese Health Ministry. This highly classified intelligence underscored a troubling resurgence of widespread pneumonic illness in the Qinghai province, one of the provinces at the core of a major international controversy during 2005.

  In 2005, thousands of suspected avian flu cases were reported in the Qinghai and Sichuan provinces by Xining News and Boxun, both underground internet-based Chinese news sources. Based on these reports, WHO officials asked the Chinese government to open the preliminary examination of these cases to the international community and formally invite the world’s combined scientific resources to guard against the pandemic potential of the H5N1 virus.

  WHO scientists were predominantly concerned with H5N1’s potential adaptation to human-to-human transmission, since strains of H5N1 had already demonstrated a rapid acceleration in animal-to-human transmission. Predictably, the Chinese government gave little tangible cooperation, prevented effective WHO investigation, and eventually misinformed the world regarding the outbreak of avian flu in 2005.

  Official Chinese press releases denie
d a widespread avian flu problem, though health ministry officials announced that a highly contagious and potentially deadly illness had spread throughout the region, resulting in hundreds of deaths. Surprisingly, Chinese government officials blamed swine streptococcus, a rare human pathogen, for the outbreak, quickly announcing that the epidemic had been contained. The WHO remained puzzled by the unusually high incidence and mortality rates, and soon grew extremely skeptical of the Chinese story.

  At the very onset of the crisis, WHO scientists, working unofficially with sympathetic Chinese virologists in Hong Kong’s Centre of Public Health, had examined hundreds of virus samples sent to the Centre’s labs from the concerned provinces. They determined with certainty that the H5N1 virus had caused the epidemic. The results of their investigation were buried in China, most probably along with the collaborating Chinese scientists. WHO scientists and representatives were immediately expelled from the country, and when confronted by the WHO regarding these scientific findings, Chinese health officials denied that the tests were ever conducted, maintaining that their expulsion was due to misconduct. It became immediately clear to the international community that the Chinese government intended to keep the real facts of the 2005 epidemic inside China.

  Most worldwide government health organizations quietly acknowledged the 2005 Chinese cover-up as a dangerous threat to world safety. However, with China on the rise as a major economic power, fully entangled with the world’s economy, the international community never overtly pushed China to further involve WHO investigators. Instead, the international community quietly concurred that the Chinese could not be trusted to take the responsible and effective actions necessary to prevent the spread of H5N1, should the virus shift to effective human-to-human transmission. Subtle plans were activated, which would at least provide the world with advanced warning of a coming pandemic. In April 2008, one of the plans yielded startling information. This information immediately activated the international community.

  Intelligence deemed highly credible by U.S. and European intelligence agencies was received by British agents in early April 2008 and immediately disseminated to the WHO and U.S. intelligence agencies. The information contained a warning that the Chinese government had mobilized the largest Health Ministry response in history to the Qinghai province. The official reason given by Chinese health officials was once again swine streptococcus, but the source strongly disputed the Chinese explanation. The source stated that the massive Health Ministry response was due to the confirmed presence of a quickly developing H5N1 flu epidemic in the Qinghai province, already larger than the outbreak in 2005.

  Most alarmingly, the majority of the cases appeared to be individuals that were never in contact or near birds discovered to carry H5N1, and the infection spread easily among human contacts within close-knit rural villages. The source stressed the high likelihood that a major antigenic shift occurred within the known H5N1 virus, evolving into a strain easily passable between humans. Also notable, neither Xining News nor Boxun ever reported the 2008 outbreak of the Qinghai province epidemic. Apparently, these underground reporting services had been quickly and efficiently silenced, adding to the complexity and sensitivity of the diplomatic situation. The world needed to address the issue with the Chinese without admitting that they had been spying.

  Several nations’ diplomatic services immediately contacted Chinese diplomatic officials, softly pressing for information, citing that rumors have persistently circulated about a new epidemic. The Chinese denied the presence of a problem in Qinghai, blaming anti-government factions for leaking false information in an attempt to sabotage the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

  Hoping to quickly disintegrate the Chinese cover-up, the WHO, backed by several major governments, took several immediate controversial steps within a few weeks of receiving the information. First, the WHO revoked several million doses of an effective H5N1 vaccine that had been promised to the Chinese Health Ministry for the control of an avian flu epidemic. These doses were pre-staged in several east-Asian nations, ready for immediate deployment to China, but now would be allocated to the surrounding region in an initial effort to contain the virus. The international community had plausible reason to believe that these doses would be misused if delivered. Nearly 20,000 doses had been delivered to China in 2006 to be used for first responders and healthcare teams assigned to directly work in close proximity to any suspected H5N1 virus. Instead, numerous reports surfaced from China in late 2006, indicating that the vaccine doses had been given to national and regional Chinese Communist Party leadership. In 2008, China did not have any capacity to produce a flu vaccine.

  Secondly, the WHO pandemic threat level was raised from phase 3 to phase 4, citing undisclosed information from Southeast Asia as the cause for the elevated threat level. This announcement provoked an immediate response from Chinese officials demanding the source of the information, and once again, completely denying the presence of an outbreak in Qinghai. The Chinese blamed the United States and several European countries for strong-arming the WHO to elevate the pandemic phase threat level in an attempt to undermine the 2008 Summer Olympics and ultimately tarnish China’s reputation. Neither the WHO, nor accused nations responded to the charge.

  Next, the WHO activated an accelerated vaccine production plan that would increase production of the current H5N1 vaccine, to meet a 1 billion new dose minimum by early fall 2008. Additionally, all seasonal flu vaccine production capability would convert over the next few months to producing the H5N1 vaccine. Initially, this action was viewed as a major gamble, since scientists had yet to determine if the current H5N1 vaccine would be effective against the new strain. As a final precaution, many countries began to stockpile anti-viral medications like Tamiflu, although their effectiveness against H5N1 was in question.

  Three weeks after the first intelligence surfaced from China, scientific virus data was obtained from a new source, and CDC virologists confirmed that the current H5N1 vaccine would be effective against the new human-to-human H5N1 strain. Frighteningly, CDC and WHO virologists also determined that the H5N1 strain currently widespread in the Qinghai province had all of the genetic markers to indicate a highly pathogenic virus, easily transmittable from human-to-human. The WHO immediately raised the pandemic threat level to phase 5, and the world was now locked in a silent race to produce H5N1 vaccine in a quantity sufficient to prevent a worldwide disaster.

  The final and most controversial step was adopted by a nearly unanimous coalition of nations within a mere week of receiving CDC and WHO confirmation of the new strain of human-to-human H5N1. Travel restrictions were instituted, severely limiting any air, sea or railway travel for passengers departing or heading to China. Regional Restricted Transit Centers were established in several nations surrounding China to screen passengers departing China by air. All air passengers originating from China were required to pass through these RRTCs for screening. Initially, these new restrictions triggered a few tense aerial standoffs, when Chinese commercial passenger jets, escorted by Chinese MiGs, attempted to force landings at unauthorized airports in Singapore, South Korea and the Philippines. The United States deployed two additional Carrier Battle Groups to the region to assist with enforcement of the travel restrictions. Despite Chinese protest of the restriction, soon all aircraft departing China were peacefully routed through the RRTCs. Sea and railway travel proved more difficult to control.

  Simultaneously, with credible scientific evidence of the new strain of H5N1 in hand, numerous United Nations members called for an immediate summit with the Chinese to discuss the unfolding events and to urge China to integrate full-scale international involvement into their efforts to contain the spreading avian flu disaster. United Nations leaders also stressed the importance of cooperation in order to ease tensions and avoid an unnecessary worldwide economic disaster.

  Chinese government officials were now receptive to outside assistance, likely due to the fact that they could no longer conceal the
sickness of nearly 2 million Chinese citizens. Most of the illness was reported in the Qinghai, Sichuan and Guizhou provinces, with several large-sized cluster outbreaks spread throughout the rest of China, including the coastal cities Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Fuzhou.

  The coastal industrial region, Guangdong, suffered from a massive outbreak, confirming a suspected southeasterly surge of cases, from the middle-western regions of China to the coastal areas surrounding Hong Kong. Despite hiding these outbreaks from the international community for nearly one month, Chinese health officials, with massive and heavy-handed military assistance, had managed to quickly and effectively quarantine the major epidemic areas, drastically limiting human traffic from infected areas.

  Although the flu pushed southeast regardless of these efforts, solid intervention and containment activity to the north prevented the flu from any large-scale sweep toward Beijing and kept the H5N1 strain from reaching its full deadly potential in China. Unfortunately, for those trapped inside the quarantined areas, the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain showed no mercy. By the spring of 2009, nearly 20.3 million Chinese died within these areas alone. Casualties throughout the rest of China reached 9.8 million. Fortunately, the 2008 case fatality rate for the H5N1 strain turned out to be lower than predicted. During the 2005 outbreaks, H5N1 case fatality estimates in Asia ranged from 40-60%. For 2008-2009, the rate was closer to 8-10%.

  While Chinese and WHO officials scrambled to contain the epidemic in China, the rest of the world continued to support quarantine travel restrictions for China and started to closely monitor their own populations for signs of the H5N1 flu. Governments began to distribute H5N1 vaccine according to national vaccination protocols and to ship limited supplies of vaccine to countries with no vaccine production capacity, as outlined by standing international protocol and pre-purchased vaccine arrangements. As of 2008, only nine countries reported vaccine production capability, with France, Germany, England and the United States providing nearly 65% of the total capacity.