The Rationing

by Charles Wheelan

  *The NIH Director had briefed the President on my hypothesis.

  †In her accounts of this conversation, the NIH Director has maintained repeatedly that I asked her, “Who invited Giscard?” That is not what I said. I do not like Giscard personally, and our feud is now public, but I would never have spoken in a way that suggested a scientist of his caliber should be excluded from our efforts to deal with the Outbreak.

  ‡You can watch the YouTube clip, which includes not just the remark (in French) but also about five seconds of audience reaction during which the scientists look around in shock.

  §I am certain that I was the first person in the room to suggest that the virulent form of Capellaviridae was different than the benign form at the molecular level. Several people who were in the room have affirmed this. Giscard, however, maintains that he had always believed this might be the case and that he had traveled to the U.S. to share this hypothesis with us. From this point on, as I will subsequently note in the text, most of the important details from this meeting—in terms of who said what—are still in dispute.

  PART 8

  THE HYPOTHESIS AND THE EGO

  70.

  THE PRESIDENT WOULD SPEAK FROM AIR FORCE ONE immediately after the Acting HHS Secretary gave his briefing to Congress. The Communications Director was adamant that there be as little time as possible between the congressional briefing and the beginning of the President’s speech. “I don’t want them to have time to make a single tweet—not even two hundred and eighty characters,” he told the Acting HHS Secretary. “And keep it simple: here’s what’s happening, here’s what we’re doing, and here is our plan in the unlikely event that we encounter a temporary shortage of Dormigen.”

  “Is that still an unlikely event?” the Acting Secretary asked. “I thought the whole point of the briefing was to make people aware of the seriousness of the situation.”

  “Okay, don’t say ‘unlikely.’ ” the Communications Director conceded. “But I want it clear that we are still pursuing multiple options to forestall a shortage.”

  “How about I just say that?” the Acting Secretary asked.

  “Fine,” the Communications Director said. “But whatever you do, don’t use the word ‘ration.’ ”

  “We are going to prioritize who gets Dormigen in the event of a shortage,” the Acting Secretary suggested.

  “Perfect.”

  “Because that’s not rationing.”

  “No one in this administration is going to use that word,” the Communications Director declared.

  “And what about Cecelia Dodds?” the Acting Secretary asked.

  “What about her?” the Communications Director asked impatiently.

  “It’s hard to say everything is going to be okay as she drifts in and out of consciousness.” That was the latest update from the hospital. Cecelia Dodds was being treated with an experimental German antibiotic that had proven effective against respiratory infections. So far, she had not responded positively.

  “We can say something about the German drug,” the Communications Director offered. “That’s the kind of thing we’ll do in the absence of Dormigen.”

  “And if she dies while I’m giving my briefing—”

  “I don’t know what the fuck we should say!” the Communications Director exploded. He composed himself and continued. “I think maybe we just don’t say anything.”

  The administration had vowed not to use the word “ration.” The Speaker of the House was intent on using that word as frequently as possible. She had taken a beating for her position on the South China Sea Agreement and as the putative leader of a Hispanic separatist movement before that. Those news cycles were now past. One does not get to be Speaker of the House, let alone a credible presidential candidate, without taking a few punches to the gut. The Speaker had arranged a press briefing in the Capitol forty-five minutes before the Acting HHS Secretary was scheduled to brief Congress. “How is she going to react to the briefing before the briefing?” the Chief of Staff asked sarcastically upon learning of the Speaker’s plans.

  “Call her,” the President directed. “Tell her we all need to be on the same page.” The Chief of Staff phoned the Speaker, who was unavailable, according to the young staffer who answered the Speaker’s cell phone. “Tell her that if she doesn’t become available, I’m going to take away her plane,” the President growled in the background, loud enough for the staffer to hear.* Miraculously, the Speaker became available.

  “The President would like to know what you plan to say at your press briefing,” the Chief of Staff said. There were no pleasantries exchanged.

  “May I speak with the President, please?” the Speaker asked. The President, who could overhear the conversation, shook his head no.

  “He’s working on his remarks,” the Chief of Staff said. “We all need to be on the same page here.”

  “Of course,” the Speaker agreed.

  “Then why are you doing a media availability before we brief Congress?” the Chief of Staff asked.

  “I have a pretty good idea what you’re going to say,” the Speaker replied. It was true that the President had done an informal briefing for the Senate Majority Leader and for many of the Conventioneers. There was no doubt that the content of these conversations had been leaked to the Speaker, if not more broadly. “Congress is a coequal branch here,” the Speaker said. “I want the public to understand that we are a partner in dealing with this crisis.”

  “So you’re calling the press to the Capitol to give them a civics lesson?” the Chief of Staff asked facetiously. “I don’t believe that.” In the background, the President was shaking his head in anger and frustration. Before the Speaker could answer, the Chief of Staff continued, “Could you just support us here for five minutes?”

  “If you are going to cut me out of the loop, I have no choice but to reassert congressional prerogative,” the Speaker said insolently.

  “We involved you from the very beginning,” the Chief of Staff said. “You decided to freelance on the South China Sea Agreement and you got burned. That’s on you.”

  The Speaker was in no mood to back down. “I’d like to know what the President plans to say,” she declared.

  “That’s why we’re doing the congressional briefing before the speech,” the Chief of Staff said.

  The Speaker gave a short, mirthless laugh. “The President has been calling people all over Washington. Everybody knows the situation.”

  “Then you don’t need the briefing, apparently.”

  “As a courtesy, I would appreciate hearing directly from the President,” the Speaker said. In the background, the President motioned for the phone; the Chief of Staff handed it to him.

  “Madam Speaker,” the President said, “I am telling you not to address the press before we do our congressional briefing.”

  “Cecelia Dodds has lost consciousness,” the Speaker said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t realize the two of you were close,” the President replied. They were not, of course. Cecelia Dodds had criticized the Speaker on several occasions for her divisive tactics. The Speaker had declined to attend the ceremony at which Dodds was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

  “She’s a national treasure,” the Speaker said. “This will be your legacy.”

  “One has to admire her selflessness,” the President said honestly.

  “Let’s cut to the chase, Mr. President, you can’t tell me when to meet with the press.”

  “Okay, then I’m asking. I’m asking you to be a team player here.”

  “It’s always about your team. It’s your team or no team,” the Speaker said.

  “What?” the President asked in genuine amazement. “I think we’re done here. You do what you have to do.”

  Eager to have the last word, the Speaker said, “And by the way, Mr. President, you can have the plane. American taxpayers shouldn’t have to bear that expense.”

  The P
resident hung up without reply. “She’s running for president,” he told the Chief of Staff. “Her donors are going to give her a nice big campaign plane. That’s what that means.”

  Two other things of note were happening at roughly the same time. In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a small group of armed Sunni extremists burst into an international school, overwhelmed a night security guard, and took a hundred and twelve students and faculty hostage. There were twenty-seven American students and two teachers among the hostages. The terrorists’ grievances were nothing new. They demanded a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf nations; the end of U.S. support for the Saudi monarchy; and assorted other such things. What was new, however, was the method to their madness. The hostage takers identified the American students with parents who worked for either the American military or the U.S. Embassy; the others were released unharmed. The kidnappers then demanded that the parents—the military and embassy officials—exchange themselves for their children. They had twelve hours to present themselves. When a parent walked into the school gymnasium, their child would be released; if that did not happen in twelve hours, the child would be shot. The terrorists had found and exploited the underbelly of the heavily fortified American presence in Saudi Arabia. Our military facilities and the embassy were impregnable; the international school, less so. The rest of this story is familiar to anyone who lived through it. I mention it merely to draw attention to the timing. The President received word of the terrorist assault just before his address to the nation.

  Meanwhile, the Secretary of State and the Strategist were on their way to Bahrain. They had not boarded Air Force One for the flight back to the U.S., as staffers had realized. The President had instructed them to reexamine the possibility of India as a Dormigen donor, but the delicate nature of that situation was such that they could not fly to India unless and until the Indian Prime Minister invited them to do so. The Secretary of State chose Bahrain as a logical intermediate destination: a place where they might plausibly have diplomatic business that was close enough to India to allow them to get there quickly should the Prime Minister summon them. Just as the two of them were touching down at Naval Support Activity Bahrain, several prominent Indian newspapers were reporting on a “new poll” from the Indian Institute for Future Security showing that 68 percent of Indian voters believed that India had an obligation to help the U.S. during the Outbreak; 73 percent agreed that “India would benefit from closer ties to the United States.” The details surrounding the poll—and the origins and funding of the Indian Institute for Future Security—remain shrouded in mystery. In a later moment of indiscretion, the Strategist did tell an audience at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York: “The Soviets taught us that no one ever wins an election with ninety-nine percent. To be credible, your fake results need to be in the sixty to seventy percent range. Even eighty percent strains credulity.”

  The Secretary of State and the Strategist stepped off the small Air Force jet in Bahrain and were immediately belted with a blast of hot, dry desert air, like opening a hot oven. An officious two-star general met them on the tarmac, eager to be of assistance and excited to be involved in whatever was happening. One did not need to be a rocket scientist—though, coincidentally, the general in question was an aeronautical engineer—to recognize that the Secretary of State does not show up on short notice with the President’s chief strategist unless something interesting is afoot. The Secretary of State was traveling without a staff, which was also highly unusual. “We’re honored to have you here, Madam Secretary,” the General said earnestly. He ushered her and the Strategist toward a terminal where a handful of other officers were waiting awkwardly with cold drinks.

  “Now what do we do?” the Secretary of State asked the Strategist under her breath.

  “We know the Prime Minister is going to read the papers. We just wait for the phone to ring,” the Strategist answered.

  The General said, “I know you have meetings with Bahraini officials, but might I be able to offer you a tour of the base?”

  “That would be excellent,” the Strategist replied.

  71.

  THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE STEPPED TO A PODIUM BENEATH the rotunda of the Capitol, the very same place where she had advocated strenuously for “the China option.” The Washington press corps recognized that the Speaker was violating protocol by making a statement before the President’s address. The bad chemistry between the President and the Speaker always made for good copy, especially now that the Outbreak had raised the stakes in their pissing match. “I will be brief,” the Speaker began. “Today I will introduce legislation guaranteeing every American access to Dormigen, irrespective of gender, religion, race, sexual orientation, or, most important, age. We do not live in a society where lifesaving drugs should be rationed. We should not have to pass legislation to guarantee such a basic right, and yet here we are. In less than an hour, the President, having failed to provide the nation with sufficient Dormigen, will announce a plan to deny that lifesaving drug to some of the most vulnerable members of society: the old and the infirm—the very people who need the nurturing hand of government most.”

  The President and Chief of Staff were watching the statement in the conference room on Air Force One. “For fuck sake,” the President muttered. “Please tell me this is not happening.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” the Chief of Staff said, genuinely perplexed. “We don’t have enough Dormigen. She’s not an idiot. What does she think we’re going to do? You can’t promise what you don’t have—”

  “She thinks we’re going to avert the crisis,” the President said with a sardonic laugh. “It’s a backhanded compliment, actually.”

  “I don’t follow,” the Chief of Staff said.

  “You have to give her credit for creativity, if nothing else,” the President answered. “She thinks we’re going to come up with the Dormigen, or figure out the virus, or something. She doesn’t think we’re going to have to ration anything. So she introduces her grandiose bill—protecting the old, the infirm, the left-handed, and everyone else—right before we lay out our rationing plan. Then, when the crisis is averted, she’s the one who promised Dormigen to everyone and we’re the ones who planned to let old people die.”

  “And if things don’t turn out all hunky-dory?”

  “Then it doesn’t matter anyway,” the President explained. “We can’t give out Dormigen we don’t have. She’s taking a gamble here.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “You don’t win the presidency without taking some risks,” the President said with what his Chief of Staff would later describe as “an admixture of respect and disgust.”

  The Speaker finished her statement: “The President will soon tell the nation who will be excluded, who is too sick or too old to be saved. Congress cannot allow that to happen. I will not live in a country that turns its back on the most vulnerable. In my America, there is Dormigen for every one of us.”

  She did not take questions. There was no way she could. The statement made no sense given the reality of what was going on; some members of the media were openly snickering. We had crowded around my laptop to watch the talk in the NIH conference room, which had grown warm and stuffy. “Is that woman crazy?” Giscard asked without a hint of sarcasm or irony. “I mean, really, does she understand what is happening?”

  “She’s a politician,” one of the CDC scientists said.

  “Yes, okay, I understand, but still: How can one promise Dormigen for all when there is no Dormigen?” Giscard asked, genuinely flummoxed. Several of us shrugged by way of reply. The Speaker clearly had better political antennae than the rest of us, because almost immediately social media exploded with what would become the #norationing campaign. Progressives organized rallies in D.C. and other big cities. One influential lefty blogger compared the President to a concentration camp guard who met the trains and sent prisoners “left or right.”

  The President called t
he Acting Secretary of HHS just before he was scheduled to do the congressional briefing. “Thank you for doing this,” the President said.

  “I’m too old for this shit,” the Acting Secretary said. “What was she thinking?”

  “About the 2032 race,” the President said.

  “Apparently. How should I respond?”

  “Don’t. Just lay out our plan. Stick to the briefing materials. The important thing is that people realize how serious the situation might become. That’s our responsibility here. Everything else is just noise.”

  “What about Q and A?” the Acting Secretary asked.

  “You have to answer questions. It’s Congress. But you know the drill: act professional and say as little as possible, no matter what they throw at you. It’s like a congressional hearing; you’ve done it a hundred times,” the President assured him.

  “Except this time it’s all of Congress and we’ve just been compared to concentration camp guards.”

  “Right. Good luck with that,” the President replied. And then, after a pause, “Seriously, thank you for carrying the water on this one.”

  “It’s an honor to do what I can, Mr. President.”

  “Okay, then, good luck. I’m on right after you.”

  In New Delhi, the phone rang—the phone call the U.S. Ambassador had been hoping for, or at least a step in that direction. A functionary in the Indian Ministry of Health called the U.S. Embassy, asking if perhaps the U.S. Ambassador would have time for a short chat with someone in the Prime Minister’s office regarding the American Dormigen shortage. As soon as possible.

  72.

  THE U.S. AMBASSADOR IMMEDIATELY RELAYED THE NEWS TO the Secretary of State and the Strategist, who cut their tour of the Bahraini base short and ensconced themselves in a small secure conference room. “I assume I call him back?” the U.S. Ambassador asked.