The Rationing

by Charles Wheelan

  54.

  THE STRATEGIST HAD ARRANGED FOR SEVERAL FOCUS GROUPS to watch the Chinese Ambassador’s statement.†† He was able to convene reasonably diverse groups in five cities across the country. He predicted, correctly it would turn out, that public reaction to the Ambassador’s talk would be extremely important in shaping the President’s response. Each of the focus group participants would have a dial during the talk that he or she could turn to register approval or disapproval throughout the speech. Zero represented the strongest possible negative reaction; one hundred was the most positive response. The data were collected and averaged in real time, so the Strategist would have instantaneous feedback to everything the Ambassador said, from beginning to end.

  The Chinese Ambassador spoke from behind a large wooden desk at the Chinese Embassy in Washington. He was a middle-aged man in a nondescript gray suit and blue tie. He looked like an avuncular, undistinguished Chinese guy who could be a high school chemistry teacher or the father of your college roommate. He stared intently into the camera and began, “Good afternoon, people of the United States of America.”

  The President was watching the address in the conference room on Air Force One with his senior advisers. The Secretary of State said, “Okay, we know the remarks were drafted in Beijing. That’s probably good for us.” The others in the room understood her point without further elaboration. The Chinese Ambassador had been educated in Britain; he spoke fluent English, albeit with a slight British accent. He would never have used such an awkward introduction if he had written the remarks himself, or even if he had had significant latitude in editing them.

  The Strategist was looking down at a laptop computer. “Wow, they really don’t like him. He’s at fifteen. That’s the lowest I’ve ever seen anyone at the beginning of a speech.”

  “The people of China would like to extend our best wishes to Cecelia Dodds,” the Chinese Ambassador continued. “We hope a speedy recovery will be possible.”

  “That’s rich,” the Secretary of State muttered. Cecelia Dodds was a persistent critic of Chinese human rights violations.

  “Look at the flags,” the President said. There was a Chinese flag on the Ambassador’s right and a noticeably smaller American flag on his left. Many focus group participants would comment on this slight to America. In fact, it was an accident. The Chinese diplomats were not able to find a suitable American flag in the embassy that morning but felt one should be displayed during the speech, out of respect. A low-level embassy staffer was dispatched to a hardware store to buy an American flag; the fact that it was noticeably smaller than the Chinese flag—and the attendant reaction that caused among American viewers—was the result of the limited choice in flags at the Dupont Circle Ace Hardware. (If the Outbreak had occurred nearer to the Fourth of July, history might have unfolded differently.)

  The Chinese Ambassador delivered banal prefatory remarks, long on rhetoric about “our two great nations.” The Strategist reported, “They’re warming up to him a little. But not much.”

  When the Ambassador reached the heart of his talk, he spoke without looking down at his prepared text: “China extends to our United States ally a hand of friendship. We are prepared to offer your great nation all the Dormigen necessary to get through this public health crisis. In exchange, we merely ask that the United States treat China with the respect a great nation deserves. The time has come for America’s imperial aggressions in the Pacific region to end. The time has come for your President to return to your country [my italics added] and pay attention to domestic concerns, rather than meddling in the Chinese sphere of influence.”

  The Strategist said, “Chinese sphere of influence? I hope they will at least execute the speechwriter. This is awful.”

  The National Security Adviser interjected, “Did he just suggest that Hawaii is not part of the United States?” This curious feature of the talk was later dissected in minute detail. The Ambassador had clearly declared that the President should return to the United States, even as Air Force One sat in Honolulu. The officials who drafted the speech in Beijing knew that the President was in Hawaii. Even the most insular among them was aware that Hawaii is part of the United States. So what happened? The most likely explanation is a translation error—that what was intended to be “return to the mainland” or “return to the continent” was somehow mistranslated as “return to your country.” We are not privy to any Chinese account of what happened. In any event, this choice of language turned out to have monumental significance, since, as the National Security Adviser realized in the moment, the speech implied that Hawaii is not part of the United States. What might have passed for an innocent mistake was perceived more menacingly because of the language about a “Chinese sphere of influence” in the Pacific. And then there is Pearl Harbor. The sad reality is that a shockingly high proportion of Americans believe that China played some role in the attack on Pearl Harbor. This point came up in four of the Strategist’s five focus groups, the most common belief being that China and Japan had been allies during World War II and had collaborated to attack Pearl Harbor.

  The Chinese Ambassador’s speech contained no specifics in terms of what would be asked of the U.S. in exchange for the Dormigen, though Americans watching clearly perceived that the cost would be significant. The phrase “holding us hostage” came up repeatedly in the focus groups, along with “bullying” and “taking advantage of our crisis.” The Chinese Ambassador concluded his remarks by saying that he would personally deliver a new “China-America Friendship Agreement” to the White House. He finished with two lines that would loom large over the next twenty-four hours. Perhaps these two sentences were a gratuitous flourish added by a speechwriter. Maybe they were dictated by President Xing, who was supposedly a huge fan of American westerns. In any event, the Chinese Ambassador stared intently into the camera and said, “Your president has a decision to make. He must refuel his plane and fly west or east.”

  As the speech finished, the Strategist stared at his laptop. “He never got above twenty-one. I’ve never seen numbers that low. Never. I worked on the defense team for a guy who shot three cops in Boston. That guy’s testimony got to twenty-three. The Ambassador finished at seven. Seven!” Focus groups intensely disliked the final two lines of the speech because they were dismissive of the democratic process. The language was clearly drafted by someone with an autocratic mind-set. While it was technically true that the President alone could decide whether Air Force One flew on to Australia or turned back for Washington, the American public—not to mention Congress—was not keen on being told that they had no say in the matter. The whole speech was an unmitigated disaster, but the “west or east” challenge turned out to be particularly significant.

  55.

  THE CHIEF OF STAFF WAS TRYING TO GET THE PRESIDENT TO go to sleep, if only for a few hours. The window between the Chinese Ambassador’s speech and his delivery of the so-called “Friendship Agreement” to the White House provided a short stretch during which the President might nap. However, the Australian Prime Minister had been trying to reach him since the crisis broke and she was patched through to Air Force One. The President took the call in his private cabin; the Secretary of State and the National Security Adviser joined him, along with a junior aide to take notes. “Mr. President, I am deeply sorry to hear about the public health crisis,” the Australian Prime Minister began. “I appreciate the dilemma this has created for you.” Her political fortunes were tied up in the South China Sea Agreement, which was extremely popular in Australia, both because of its collective security arrangements and also because it curbed Chinese overfishing and other behaviors that were harming Australian commercial interests.

  “I appreciate your generous gift of Dormigen,” the President said.

  The obvious question, of course, was what to do about the South China Sea Agreement. The Australian Prime Minister said that there would be no problem pushing back the signing ceremony for several weeks, or even a month
if necessary. She explained, “Obviously our primary concern is that the treaty remain intact with the U.S. as a signatory.”

  “We have every intention of honoring that agreement,” the President said.

  The Secretary of State added, “We fully understand how important this treaty is to the future of the Pacific region and we are doing everything we can to deal with this situation without compromising our long-term interests.”

  The Australian Prime Minister replied, “I think we all know the strings that will be attached to the Chinese Dormigen offer.”

  “Yes,” the Secretary of State acknowledged.

  The President said, “That bit about flying ‘east or west’ was a nice touch, huh?”

  “How has the speech been received?” the Australian Prime Minister asked.

  “So far it appears to be a complete bomb,” the President said. “The Chinese Ambassador was perceived as bullying and opportunistic.”

  “I’m not surprised. Still, it’s going to be very hard to turn down the Chinese offer if it means American lives will be lost.”

  “We’re anticipating the Chinese will ask for the moon,” the National Security Adviser interjected. “Paradoxically, that could make our decision easier.”

  “But you have no hint of the specifics?” the Australian Prime Minister asked.

  “Not yet,” the President said. In fact, the U.S. had intercepted a large volume of communications between Beijing and the Chinese Embassy in Washington, most of which suggested that China would demand a near-complete withdrawal of U.S. forces in South Korea, Japan, and elsewhere in the region.

  The Australian Prime Minister said, “While respecting the delicacy of your situation, what I am hoping to hear, Mr. President, is that you are still committed to the South China Sea Agreement. Might it be possible for you to make a public statement to that effect, even if it were conditional on the contents of the China offer?”

  “Let’s draft something,” the President said, looking to the Secretary of State, who nodded agreement.

  “That’s great to hear, Mr. President,” the Prime Minister said. “As I said at the outset of the call, the timing of when we sign the agreement is less important than your firm commitment to it.”

  “Of course,” the President said. “Can we speak privately for a minute?” This was not unusual. The business of the call having been accomplished, the two leaders would be able to talk without aides listening in. We know that the President and the Australian Prime Minister spoke for roughly another three minutes. There is no record of what was said, and both leaders have been strikingly reticent about the details. Based on subsequent events, however, we have a pretty good idea what the President proposed.

  * My inner scientist compels me to point out that recent research has found clear gender-based differences in decision making, particularly in life-and-death situations (or the simulation thereof). There is no evidence to substantiate the Secretary of Defense’s assertion that women are less capable military leaders. However, his implicit suggestion that there might be systematic differences between how men and women make battlefield decisions is defensible. Of course, it is entirely possible—and perhaps likely, according to my amateur reading of history—that less testosterone makes for much better military leadership.

  † Unless you are a policy wonk, you may not have any interest in this: One feature of the South China Sea Agreement was a uniform carbon tax to be implemented in all of the signatory nations ($42 per ton of CO2 emission, to rise at 2 percent annually). Commonly called a “pollution tax,” this was a measure that economists had recommended for years as a tool for discouraging the most carbon-intensive activities. The signatory nations also agreed to impose a “carbon tariff” on countries that did not adopt a similar carbon tax—namely China. The net effect was likely to be a huge reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, albeit at a high cost to Chinese manufacturing.

  ‡ As a matter of basic geography, Air Force One was still east of Hawaii, so no one was going to see Kiribati or Guadalcanal out the window. But, to paraphrase the iconic twentieth-century film Animal House, she was “on a roll.”

  § Senator Derek McDowell, “Statement to the Outbreak Inquiry Commission,” 2031.

  ¶ These are all real examples gathered by the Outbreak Inquiry Commission.

  # The Strategist was, at the time, considered to be one of the top twenty competitive bridge players in the world. In bridge, players see their cards and then make a “bid” as to how well they will do in the hand. A player can mess up a hand with great cards by bidding too aggressively, or “overbidding.”

  ** He had been a tenured member of the Princeton Economics Department before winning his Senate seat. At the time, he was one of only two members of Congress with a Ph.D.

  †† There had not been sufficient time to do this before the President’s earlier address to the nation.

  PART 6

  NATURE FIGHTS BACK

  56.

  MY MEDIA DUTIES WERE FINISHED FOR THE TIME BEING. The NIH Director had summoned me back to the NIH offices, where the scientific effort to understand Capellaviridae had been massively bulked up once the crisis became public. Tie Guy was pursuing the notion that efforts to eradicate the North American dust mite had somehow created a new kind of toxicity. He had assembled a team of organic chemists to look at whether the dust mites that survived the pyrethrin-based insecticides might use Capellaviridae to metabolize the poison in a way that makes it harmful to humans. “What do the chemists think?” I asked him when I arrived at the NIH offices.

  “They’re skeptical,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because there is no evidence to support the theory. The people who get sick don’t test positive for any form of pyrethrin. Also, there is no obvious explanation for how a virus can turn a compound that is nontoxic for humans into something deadly.”

  “A dead end?” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” Tie Guy insisted. “I went back and looked at the data again. This connection between trying to eradicate dust mites and the virulent form of Capellaviridae holds up. So does that other strange pattern we saw: when people get sick with Capellaviridae in areas where the North American dust mite is not endemic, those people have almost always moved from a region where it is endemic.”

  “Moving away from an area where the virus is common is more likely to make you sick than staying there?” I said, trying to make sense of what he was saying. I was operating on relatively little sleep.

  “Yeah, how weird is that?” Tie Guy said. “It’s all ass-backwards. The safest place to be is an area with no North American dust mites and no Capellaviridae. No surprise there. But the next-best place to be is an area where dust mites and Capellaviridae are common and there has been no widespread extermination effort.”

  I tried to finish his thought: “And you are most at risk of Capellaviridae turning virulent if you are in an area where you try to wipe it out—”

  “Where people are trying to wipe out the dust mite, the carrier, but yes.”

  I continued, “And someone would be at risk if they live in an area with Capellaviridae and then move away.”

  “Yes, but you’re only at risk if you move to an area without it. If you move to another area where the North American dust mite and Capellaviridae are endemic, you’ll be fine.”

  “How is that possible?” I asked, completely flummoxed.

  “You tell me. I’m just a data guy. Ask these people,” he said, motioning to the throng of activity all around us. There were easily twice as many people on the floor as there had been on my earlier visits. A frenetic pace had replaced the complacency that had been so disorienting before the Outbreak became public. Tie Guy continued, “There’s something to this, right?”

  “It’s weird.”

  “Nature fights back, that’s what it’s telling me,” he insisted.

  “How so?” I asked. If I had had more sleep, maybe it would have been more obvious to me.


  “Because the virus, or maybe the dust mite, or maybe both—they’re saying, ‘Don’t get rid of me. If you do, you’ll pay a price.’ ”

  “That would be unprecedented,” I said.

  “So was AIDS,” Tie Guy replied. “Evolution does some pretty crazy things.”

  “You may be right,” I said. “I just don’t know how or why.”

  Back in Hawaii, the President and his senior staff had finally found some moments of calm as they awaited the Chinese offer. Air Force One was refueled, but the President did not want to be caught airborne again if he needed to make a public statement in response to the Chinese move. The Chinese Ambassador’s “high noon” challenge regarding the flight path of the President’s plane, east or west, had also imbued the next takeoff with added significance. An enormous bank of cameras was parked on the runway. Before settling into his cabin for a short nap, the President phoned Cecelia Dodds in her Seattle hospital room. “I’m not taking the medicine!” she said when she picked up the phone. There was warmth in her voice but also firmness.

  “That’s not a battle I’m going to win,” the President said honestly. “I want you to know that the Chinese are likely to offer onerous terms—”

  “I understand completely,” Cecelia Dodds said emphatically. “Please don’t think for a minute that I’m trying to pressure you to take a bad deal. Please, no. It’s just that I’m seventy-one, and if there is not enough Dormigen, then someone else should have it.”

  “Seventy-one is not that old,” the President said.

  “No,” she agreed. “No, it’s not.”

  “What if I were to ask you to accept the Dormigen as a personal favor to me?” the President asked sincerely.