The Rationing

by Charles Wheelan

  A new face appeared on one of the cable channels, the first “outside authority” to go on camera after the story broke. The Communications Director unmuted the sound so the room could hear “Retired Virus Expert” Dr. Vikram Banerjee: “The terrorists have most likely introduced a virulent virus, such as MERS—”

  “That would be Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome,” the host offered.

  “That’s correct,” Banerjee said confidently. “It’s a potent virus because it is airborne and can spread quickly via almost any kind of human contact.”

  “What would you advise for Americans right now?” the host asked, his hand perched under his chin in a way that suggested grave concern.

  “The key is to stay away from other people or any other place where the virus might spread,” Banerjee advised.

  The Communications Director let out something between a growl and a shriek, muting the sound once again. “Where did they find this douchebag?” he asked to no one in particular.

  “We need to get on air,” the Chief of Staff said. “We have to get the real story out.”

  “I’ve got the President booked on all the morning shows,” the Communications Director said. “We can do it using the video uplink on the plane.”

  The President interjected, “No, it should be an address. I don’t want to be answering questions. I want to make a clear, uninterrupted statement about what is happening—and what is not happening.”

  “You’re going to have to answer questions,” the Communications Director said.

  At that point, a junior staffer walked into the conference room and handed two sheets of paper to the Communications Director. “Oh, Christ,” the Communications Director said as he read.

  “What?” the President asked.

  “The Speaker just issued a statement,” the Communications Director answered. He began reading aloud as his eyes raced down the page. “ ‘The House of Representatives and I stand ready to provide leadership . . . blah, blah.’ Oh, my God: ‘Now is a time for us to reach out to our allies—’ ”

  The National Security Adviser said, “She’s making the China play.”

  “Of course she is,” the Chief of Staff said. “She’s going to deliver the China Dormigen.”

  “Did she at least say it’s not a terrorist attack?” the President asked.

  “Second-to-last paragraph,” the Communications Director said as he continued reading. “ ‘I want to emphasize that at this point we have no evidence of a terrorist attack.’ ”

  The Chief of Staff exclaimed, “That’s it? No evidence of a terror attack? How about, we know for certain—”

  The Communications Director cut her off, “It gets worse. Last graph: ‘After we have confronted this crisis, I will personally lead an investigation into how America allowed its Dormigen stocks to become so disastrously low. I am especially troubled by the privatization of our Dormigen production.’ ”

  The President said loudly, “Why does she have a statement out before we do?” The room was silent. “Put out a fucking statement! We are already twenty feet underwater on this.”

  “We are going to have a comprehensive statement out in the next ten minutes,” the Chief of Staff assured him.

  “We don’t need a dissertation,” the President snapped. “We just need to get some facts out there so we don’t leave a vacuum for all this crap.”

  In the brief silence that followed, the Communications Director’s phone chirped lightly. He looked at the screen, read for a moment, and then hurled the phone across the room at the opposite wall. It splintered into several pieces, one of which bounced back onto the conference table, settling in front of the Secretary of Defense. As the others in the room stared at the shattered cell phone, the Communications Director said, “The satellite uplink isn’t working. We can’t send video from the plane.”

  “Can we fix it?” the Chief of Staff asked.

  “I don’t know,” the Communications Director answered.

  The President said, “I need to be on television. I need to address the country.”

  “We can do radio,” the Chief of Staff offered.

  “I’m not fucking FDR,” the President snapped.

  “The safest option is to get you on the ground in Hawaii,” the Communications Director offered. “That would be about an hour shorter.”

  “Or we could fix the uplink,” the Chief of Staff said.

  “Who?” the President challenged. “Who on this plane knows how to fix a satellite uplink?”

  “Then we need to go to Hawaii,” the Chief of Staff said. “Right? That gets us on the ground an hour earlier.” The President nodded assent. For the second time in half an hour, Air Force One made an aggressive 180-degree turn. And for the second time, the Captain did not ask why. In the back of the plane, the press corps did wonder why the plane was once again making a U-turn. Unfortunately—and arguably unfairly—the metaphor for the White House response was born: Air Force One flying in circles over the Pacific.

  43.

  TWO BLOCKS BEFORE THE MARRIOTT, WHEN I COULD SEE THE bright lights illuminating the circular driveway in front of the hotel, I looked back over my shoulder and spotted headlights coming toward me. I could see the bright taxi light as the car drew closer. I stepped aggressively into the street to hail the cab. By this point I was damp from the mist, not soaked, but also sweating despite the cool early morning. I reached for the back door of the taxi and pulled the handle; it was locked. I instinctively looked to the driver’s window, which buzzed down about halfway. The driver was an enormous black man with short salt-and-pepper hair. He stared out the window, locking eyes with me but not saying anything. I had never hailed a cab in D.C. at four-thirty in the morning. I suppose it makes sense that a sensible driver does not let just anyone jump in the back. “I need to go to the White House,” I said. The driver cocked his head slightly, still saying nothing. “It’s really important,” I added.

  “Have you been drinking?” he asked without irony. I presume he could tell from looking at me that I was not going to stick a gun in the back of his head, but it was entirely plausible that I had been drinking all night and might vomit in the back of his cab. I fished into my pocket and pulled out my White House badge. I held it up in front of the window.

  “It’s important,” I repeated.

  “Okay, get in.” I heard the locks pop.

  The cab dropped me at the northwest gate, where I usually entered, but I did not recognize the guard. Nor did I recognize the woman sitting in the lighted booth behind him. I flashed my visitor badge. “Who are you here to see?” the guard asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “Your name is not in the visitors log,” he said.

  “It’s an emergency.”

  “Someone still has to sign you in.”

  “Okay, hold on.” I dialed the Chief of Staff, but there was no answer. I texted her: “Someone has to sign me in to the White House.” The rain began to fall a little harder, and I moved under the eaves of the guardhouse. I dialed the Communications Director, unaware that his phone was strewn in pieces around the conference room of Air Force One. No answer. I turned back to the guard. “Who’s inside already?” I asked. “Who can sign me in?”

  “I can’t tell you that.” His tone suggested I should know as much, and he grew more suspicious just for the asking. My secure phone buzzed; caller ID showed it was the Chief of Staff. “I’m at the White House but I can’t get in,” I said.

  “There has been a change of plans,” she explained. “We don’t want you to look political. You’re supposed to be the voice of science. We want to put you on camera somewhere else—not the White House.”

  “My cab just left. I’m standing outside in the rain.”

  “You’ll need a car.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “We don’t know yet. Does the NIH have TV facilities?” the Chief of Staff asked.

  “Maybe, but there won’t be anyone there to run th
e equipment,” I said.

  “Just stay there,” she said, hanging up. No one said hello or goodbye that day. After about five minutes a young woman in blue jeans and a sweatshirt came walking briskly down the path from the West Wing, two pieces of paper flapping in her hand. She opened the gate from the inside and thrust the papers toward me. “We just issued this release,” she said. I looked at her quizzically. She continued, “I’m the Assistant to the Deputy Communications Director. We listed you as the scientific contact on the release. Reporters are going to start calling, so you need to think about what you are going to say.”

  I held up my secure phone. “On this number?”

  “No, on your cell phone.”

  “I left my cell phone at home,” I said.

  “Fuck.” She exhaled audibly. I began to read the release. The first paragraph explained that the Capellaviridae virus was a common virus that had recently proven dangerous to humans. The statement declared in bold letters: “There has been no terrorist attack. Capellaviridae is a common virus found in nearly all American households.”

  The second paragraph explained that the White House was going to “extraordinary measures” to procure sufficient doses of Dormigen to deal with the virus threat. Near the bottom of the page, the release explained that Capellaviridae was “spread by the bite of a common dust mite found in most—” I stopped reading. “We can’t say ‘spread.’ You’ve got to redo this.”

  “It’s gone out,” she said, mildly annoyed, as if I did not appreciate the magnitude of what was going on. “I was told to get something out immediately.”

  “We can’t say ‘spread,’ ” I repeated. “We cannot have people thinking that they’re going to catch this thing. It’s not contagious . . . You’re either going to get it, or you’re not. We can’t—”

  “I can do an update. What am I supposed to say?” she asked.

  “I don’t have my phone, so you need to change the contact number anyway.”

  “Fine. Tell me what to write.”

  “Just say . . .” I was thinking as I spoke, but not fast enough. “Say it’s not contagious,” I instructed. “Leave the dust mite out. Just tell people . . . say it’s not contagious. Say that nearly all Americans are infected by—no, don’t say ‘infected.’ Say that many Americans are hosts to Capellaviridae, and in the vast majority of cases, the virus is benign.” She was just staring at me. “Write this down,” I said sharply. Neither she nor I had a pen. As I patted my jacket pockets, the guard, who had been standing near us the whole time, offered a ballpoint. I continued, “Say that we are—that scientists, the nation’s top scientists, are working around the clock to determine why Capellaviridae turns virulent—”

  “No one knows what virulent means.”

  “Fine, say ‘dangerous.’ ”

  She offered her phone to me. “Take this,” she said. “We’ll use my number as the contact number on the updated release.” Just as she handed me her phone, my secure phone beeped with a text from the Chief of Staff: Get to the CNN studio. The Communications Assistant read the text at the same time I did. As I stood there paralyzed, she grabbed her phone back from me. “I’ll get you a car,” she said.

  44.

  ON BOARD AIR FORCE ONE, THE PRESIDENT AND SENIOR staff monitored the news after the release of the White House statement. News directors all over the world had been waiting for any information from the White House, so they rushed out the first thing to come over the wire. The revised statement, issued after my exchange with the Communications Assistant, was ignored. Almost no one noticed the absence of the word “spread” in the second release, and once we had mentioned the dust mite, there was no way of unringing that bell. Sure enough, CNN broadcast a huge graphic of the North American dust mite, just like the one Tie Guy had been so enamored of days earlier. Prime-time anchor Linda Schuham was alone on camera, presumably having been roused from bed and rushed through makeup. (When I appeared on camera forty-five minutes later, I would not look so put-together.) The electronic banner below the anchor desk read, “Bioterror Attack?”

  “At least now we have a question mark,” the Strategist commented sardonically. The Communications Director was calling news outlets, one after another, demanding that they remove any reference to terrorism. His smashed phone—which had been cleaned up, but for the occasional piece that turned up on the carpeted floor—was turning out to be a huge problem. That phone had all his contact numbers; worse, it was the number recognized by the people who needed to be answering his calls. Now he was fighting his way through layers of gatekeepers with each call, screaming things like, “I’m standing next to the President, you fucking peon! Put me on with your producer now or you will never work in the news business again!”†

  Fox was now running a banner at the bottom of the screen: “White House denies terror attack.” In focusing on the terror angle, however, we had made no progress in disabusing the nation of the belief that Capellaviridae was spreading. By six a.m. on the East Coast, over two thousand school districts had canceled classes. Universities were telling students to stay in their dorm rooms and avoid common areas—even as students rushed to common areas to watch the news warning them to stay out of common areas.‡ Americans in the Midwest woke up to reports that most schools and workplaces in the East were closed, further embedding the notion that some kind of plague was sweeping across the nation. Fox News cut to a “Contagious Disease Expert” via satellite, a well-coiffed woman sitting at a desk in an academic office. She explained to viewers, “The dust mite bites an infected person and then bites someone else, thereby passing along the deadly virus.” The Strategist, holding the remote control, was shaking his head no as he listened.

  “What advice would you offer?” the anchor asked earnestly.

  “Obviously you stay away from other people, since we don’t know who is already infected.”

  “And what about the dust mites?”

  “Vacuum anyplace they might be found. Wash all sheets and towels in hot water and bleach.”

  “Would it be better to burn them?” the anchor asked.

  “That’s a good option, if you can do it safely,” the expert advised.

  The President roared,§ “Where’s our guy? Why are we not on-screen?”

  The Communications Director looked at his watch and answered, “He’ll be up on CNN in about four minutes.”

  The Chief of Staff said, “Mr. President, we are going to be in Hawaii in an hour. We have broadcast facilities set up at the air base. We need to start drafting your remarks.”

  “I want to see this,” the President said, looking at the television.

  The Strategist changed the channel to CNN, where the anchor was talking to a terrorism expert, and then changed it again, this time to MSNBC, which was showing aerial footage of a massive backup on the George Washington Bridge as drivers rushed to leave New York City. “Where do they think they’re going?” the Strategist asked no one in particular. Of course, we now know the answer. Many of these drivers would show up at campgrounds in Vermont and Maine—not willing to risk a motel—where they set up tents or slept in their cars, often completely unprepared for the cold. A young couple from New Jersey wandered into the woods north of Bangor, where there was still snow on the ground, and died of exposure hours later. Hikers found their bodies in June. This urge to drive somewhere was one of the stranger aspects of the Outbreak. An urge to move. To do something. And then there were the gun deaths. A high proportion of Americans believed that repelling Capellaviridae was somehow like fighting zombies. More than three hundred people died from gun accidents in the three days after the Capellaviridae news broke. How exactly was one supposed to fight a lurking virus with a shotgun? People tried, apparently. There were also tragic homicides as paranoid individuals shot neighbors who had come to check in or offer help. Another fifty or so people died in house fires after they tried to burn “contaminated” sheets and towels indoors, sometimes in the bathtub.

  Last year Pri
nceton University convened an interdisciplinary conference on the Outbreak: public health officials, virologists, national security experts, and so on. I spoke on some panels, but I also sat in on sessions with scholars who had examined the crisis through a different lens. A psychology professor from the University of Illinois¶ spoke about the unique nature of the Outbreak, namely that all Americans perceived themselves at risk, but none, save our political leaders, were in a position to act. One passage from her paper (which she summarized at the conference) has stuck with me, as it helps to make sense of the country’s utter craziness in those first hours:

  On September 11, after all the planes had been grounded, Americans could reasonably (if not always rationally) infer that some places (e.g., Omaha) were at lower risk for future attacks than others (Los Angeles). Even when these assumptions were wrong or irrational, the residents perceived that they were in a position to minimize their own exposure.

  Americans were also presented with an array of options to “strike back” at Islamic terrorism. Many of these efforts were fruitless, or even counterproductive. Some promoted intolerance; some were illegal. My focus here is not on whether the responses were appropriate. My point is that that there was an opportunity to act [emphasis added]. From a psychological standpoint, this action provided an enormous relief. The Outbreak, on the other hand, put every single American more or less equally at risk and gave them no course of action with which to channel that anxiety. The result was often psychologically devastating.

  Of course, many people did act, just not in ways that made the situation any better. One reality we overlooked before the crisis went public is that the bulk of the nation’s Dormigen supply was unsecured. It was a drug with no recreational value, like aspirin or antibiotic lotion. In most hospitals, the Dormigen was in places easily accessible by all: in the examining rooms, at the nurses’ station, in hallway cabinets, and so on. In the immediate hours after the Outbreak became public, doctors and nurses and pharmaceutical reps and warehouse attendants and anyone else with access to the drug realized that they were potentially in possession of a lifesaving resource that would soon disappear. We had done nothing to secure the supply. A truck driver in Virginia was rolling along I-95 when he heard the first reports of the Outbreak on the radio. He had left a hospital supply warehouse in Georgia two days earlier. On a hunch, he pulled off the highway and parked his eighteen-wheeler in the far corner of a truck stop. He slid open the back door, revealing ninety-seven cases of Dormigen—a cargo that was now more valuable than heroin. The truck later turned up empty in Pennsylvania. The Dormigen, like so much of the supply, was gone—sold on one of the black markets that popped up everywhere. The Outbreak Inquiry Commission subsequently calculated that roughly 17 percent of the nation’s Dormigen supply was purloined in the twelve hours after the crisis became public.