Virus Hunters 3: A Medical Thriller
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Real World News Excerpts
TIMELINE OF A PANDEMIC
December 31, 2019
MYSTERY PNEUMONIA INFECTS DOZENS IN CHINA’S WUHAN CITY
~ South China Morning Post
January 13, 2020
CHINA REPORTS FIRST DEATH FROM NEWLY IDENTIFIED VIRUS
~ KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION Global Health Policy Report
January 21, 2020
FIRST TRAVEL-RELATED CASE OF 2019 NOVEL CORONAVIRUS DETECTED IN UNITED STATES ~ CDC Newsroom
February 26, 2020
CDC CONFIRMS FIRST POSSIBLE COMMUNITY TRANSMISSION OF CORONAVIRUS IN U.S. ~ CNBC
February 29, 2020
WASHINGTON STATE REPORTS FIRST CORONAVIRUS DEATH IN U.S.
~ CBS News
March 1, 2020
22 PATIENTS IN U.S. HAVE CORONAVIRUS, PRESIDENT SAYS ~ CNN
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION DECLARES THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK A GLOBAL PANDEMIC
~ CNBC, March 11, 2020
PRESIDENT TRUMP DECLARES NATIONAL EMERGENCY OVER CORONAVIRUS
~ BBC News, March 13, 2020
CORONAVIRUS NOW PRESENT IN ALL 50 STATES
~ NPR, March 16, 2020
NEW YORK CITY DECLARED UNITED STATES OUTBREAK EPICENTER
~ ABC News, March 20, 2020
GLOBAL PANDEMIC CASES HIT I MILLION
~ BBC, April 3, 2020
More than a million cases of coronavirus have been registered globally, according to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University - another grim milestone as the world grapples with the spreading pandemic.
The disease, Covid-19, first emerged in central China three months ago.
Though the tally kept by Johns Hopkins records one million confirmed cases, the actual number is thought to be much higher. It took a month and a half for the first 100,000 cases to be registered. A million was reached after a doubling in cases over the past week. Nearly a quarter of cases have been registered in the United States, while Europe accounts for around half.
The pandemic is taking a huge economic toll: an extra 6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment benefit last week.
NEW EVIDENCE REVEALS TIMELINE OF COVID-19 DEATHS BEGAN EARLIER THAN THOUGHT – The outbreak spanning the globe began in December, in Wuhan, China
~ ABC News, April 23, 2020
Officials in Santa Clara County, California, announced last night that at least two deaths in early February can now be attributed to COVID-19.
Until now, the first US fatality from the pandemic coronavirus was assumed to be in the Seattle area on Feb 28, but postmortem testing on deaths from Feb 6 and Feb 17 now confirm that COVID-19 was spreading in the San Francisco Bay area weeks earlier than previously thought.
Meanwhile, another new study finds evidence that the first COVID-19 cases in New York City originated in Europe and occurred as early as February. Researchers traced the origin of New York City's outbreak and found it was primarily linked to untracked transmission between the U.S. and Europe, with limited evidence showing direct introductions from China or other countries in Asia.
THE NUMBER OF GLOBAL COVID-19 CASES SURPASSED 5 MILLION
~ CBS News, May 21, 2020
Some 5,011,000 cases were tallied as of May 20 – more than 1.5 million of them in the United States, which had more than 93,000 deaths of roughly 328,00 globally. Agence France-Presse says Europe has been hit hardest, with more than 1,954,000 cases and almost 170,000 deaths.
The numbers are thought by many experts to represent only a fraction of the actual number of cases, with many countries testing only people with symptoms or the most serious infections, AFP notes.
Latin America overtook the U.S. and Europe over the past week as the place reporting the largest portion of new daily cases, the Reuters news agency points out.
SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE WINTER SPURS RISE IN COVID-19 CASES
~ The South China Morning Post, June 13, 2020
New research in Australia suggests the virus causing the Covid-19 disease is spreading faster in lower humidity, supporting evidence that the southern hemisphere will see a rise in infections in the coming winter months.
Lower humidity allowed the virus to stay airborne for longer, increasing the potential for exposure, said Professor Michael Ward, a zoonotic disease expert at the University of Sydney who led the peer-reviewed study. High humidity caused the virus to fall to the ground quicker, he said.
“Our studies, one in the northern hemisphere winter and one in the southern hemisphere summer, confirm the role of climate, especially low humidity, in Covid-19 spread,” Ward said in an interview. “With this study, it seems humidity is more of a consistent driver of Covid-19 transmission, while temperature’s effect can vary depending on location.”
The findings echo recent concerns that the southern hemisphere has yet to see the worst of this pandemic, which has largely peaked in the northern hemisphere.
Ward added that another pointer from the research was that the northern hemisphere still faced infection risk during its summer.
ANOTHER DAILY RECORD IN NEW U.S. CORONAVIRUS CASES
~ The Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2020
New coronavirus cases in the U.S. rose by more than 63,000, another single-day record, as hospitals in Texas, California and other states strain to accommodate a surge of new patients.
Experts are calling for shutdowns as coronavirus infections and hospitalizations spike. Increased testing reveals the number of infected is much larger than previously reported. Cases appear to be inching back up over the last month, concerning health officials.
SECOND WAVE OF COVID-19 CASES? EXPERTS SAY WE ARE STILL IN THE FIRST WAVE
~ Associated Press, July 11, 2020
There is at one point of agreement among politicians and scientists: “Second wave” is probably the wrong term to describe what’s happening around the world. Specialists at the National Institutes of Health state “We’re in the first wave. Let’s get out of the first wave before you have a second wave.”
Clearly there was an initial infection peak in April as cases exploded in New York City. But “it’s more of a plateau, or a mesa,” not the trough after a wave, said Caitlin Rivers, a disease researcher at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security.
Scientists generally agree the nation is still in its first wave of coronavirus infections, albeit one that’s dipping in some parts of the country while rising in others.
“This virus is spreading around the United States and hitting different places with different intensity at different times,” said Dr. Richard Besser, chief executive of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation who was acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when a pandemic flu hit the U.S. in 2009.
Dr. Arnold Monto, a University of Michigan flu expert, agreed.
“What I would call this is continued transmission with flare-ups,” he said.
Flu seasons sometimes feature a second wave of infections. But in those cases, the second wave is a distinct new surge in cases from a strain of flu that is different than the strain that caused earlier illnesses. That’s not the case in the coronavirus epidemic.
Some worry a large wave of coronavirus might occur this fall or winter — after the weather turns colder and less humid, and people huddle inside more. That would follow seasonal patterns seen with flu and other respiratory viruses. And such a fall wave could be very bad, given that there’s no vaccine or experts think most Americans haven’t had the virus.
But the novel coronavirus so far has been spreading more episodically and sporadically than flu, and it may not follow the same playbook.
“It’s very difficult to make a prediction. We don’t know the degree to which this virus is seasonal, if at all. Only time will tell.”
Epigraph
“He who fights monsters should see to it that in the process, he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back at you.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher, 1844 - 1900
“Nothing, but the immediate finger of God, nothing but omnipotent power, could have done it. The contagion despised all medicine; death raged in every corner; and had it gone on as it did then, a few weeks more would have cleared the town of all, and everything that had a soul. Men everywhere began to despair; every heart failed them for fear; people were made desperate through the anguish of their souls, and the terrors of death sat in the very faces and countenances of the people.”
~ Daniel DeFoe, English Author, writing about bubonic plague in
Journal of the Plague Year, 1722
From the vain enterprise honor and undue complaint,
Boats tossed about among the Latins, cold, hunger, waves
Not far from the Tiber the land stained with blood,
And diverse plagues will be upon mankind.
~ Nostradamus, English Century V, Quatrain 63
It’s always too late no matter what we do.
~ Dr. Harper Randolph, Virus Hunter
Contents
Virus Hunters
Part I
Deliverance From 21,000 Feet
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Part II
My Adventures as a Disease Detective
Regional Map
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Part III
Now the Real Work Begins
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Part IV
Indefinite Doubt
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
From the Author
A Note from the Author
Virus Hunters
A Medical Thriller | Part Three
by
Bobby Akart
Part I
Deliverance From 21,000 Feet
Chapter One
Dr. Basnet’s Home
Lhasa, Tibet, China
Staccato bursts of automatic weapons’ gunfire reverberated through the valleys and rocky terrain surrounding Lhasa’s Gonggar Airport. Even several miles away, the gun battle was evident to Dr. Zeng Qi and his nephew, Fangyu, who nervously awaited the return of their new friends. Dr. Harper Randolph and her Asian-American partner, Dr. Kwon Li, had been fearless in the face of danger as they traveled across the world in search of patient zero.
Despite the threats to their own lives, Dr. Zeng and Fangyu risked certain imprisonment while assisting Harper as she searched for the deadly virus spreading throughout Western China and that had now made its way into the United States.
“What is happening, nephew?”
“Maybe we should go help them?” Fangyu asked in reply. He wandered away from his elderly uncle and stepped toward the gravel driveway entrance leading to Dr. Basnet Dema’s home. The Tibetan physician, who’d been maintaining the disease-stricken corpse of a helicopter pilot in a military quarantine facility, had reached out to Dr. Zeng via WeChat.
Both men shared a common goal—prevent the cover-up by the Chinese government of a deadly viral outbreak. The Americans, Harper and the CDC, were trying to make up for perceived shortcomings in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–21.
The doctors concocted a plan to perform an autopsy on the dead pilot with a full understanding of the concept of high risk, high reward. The body would provide valuable clues into their quest for patient zero. However, the plan appeared to be in jeopardy as the sounds of gunfire erupted and could be heard for miles across the rocky terrain.
Then it stopped. The shots ceased, but the wailing sirens of security police vehicles persisted. They also appeared to be getting closer.
Fangyu removed his cell phone from his pocket and studied the display. There had been no communications with Harper or Kwon since they’d pulled out of the driveway, snuggled into body bags, in the borrowed ambulance driven by Dr. Basnet’s associate Yeshi.
“It is too risky to message them,” muttered Fangyu.
“We must try to help, nephew!” Dr. Zeng was distraught. He’d withheld his opinions regarding the risky endeavor onto the People’s Liberation Army facility adjacent to the Lhasa airport. He’d observed the determination on the part of Harper and Kwon to pursue this lead. Now he regretted not insisting they consider other options.
Fangyu swung around with his arms spread apart. His face revealed his consternation. “And fight the police with what? These stupid rocks.” He knelt down, grabbed a golf-ball-sized stone, and hurled it in the direction of the airport.
Ding!
His cell phone notified him of an incoming message. It was from a number he didn’t immediately recognize.
+ 86 89 1632 3302: We are safe. MSS coming. Go now!
Fangyu studied the message and ran to his uncle, waving the phone in front of him until he steadied himself long enough to reveal the message.
“Go where?” asked Dr. Zeng. “Are they expecting us to leave them behind?”
“I am afraid to call them back.”
“Should we go looking for them? We have their car and their things.”
Oncoming sirens grew louder, causing both men to take a few paces toward the highway.
“Uncle, the security police are coming closer.”
“But—” Dr. Zeng attempted to argue his point, but Fangyu, who’d regained his composure, made a suggestion.
“I have an idea. Come with me.”
The two men, leaving the front door wide open, moved briskly toward the CIA-supplied Volkswagen C-Trek. It was a common vehicle driven by those in the mountainous communities of Tibet. Therefore, despite its Xinjiang-issued license plates, it would not likely garner the attention of the police.
Fangyu drove down the gravel driveway, keeping one eye out for potholes and the other on his phone. Using his thumb, he navigated the touchscreen display as he skidded to an abrupt stop at the road.
“Nephew, what are you doing?”
He turned the vehicle to the right and eased onto the road. Driving with his knees, he explained, “This is an mSpy app developed by a group of friends at the college. It gives us the ability to monitor calls, texts, and locations of other Android phones.”
“How do you know his phone is Android?”
“A hunch, Uncle. The most popular phones used by young people are Oppo, Vivo, and Huawei. All Androids. Our spy app allows us to track the location of the phone using global positioning just like the police do.”
Dr. Zeng looked in his side-view mirror and gripped the grab bar in front of him until his knuckles turned white. “Nephew! Look out!”
Two black sedans sped around the corner and barreled down on them. They were unmarked without lights or sirens but bore the unmistakable appearance of China’s Ministry of State Security, or MSS. Their sudden appearance startled Fangyu, who instinctively slowed and pulled onto the shoulder of the road. Seconds later, the two large four-door sedans raced past them. The wi
nd draft created by their speed shook the C-Trek.
“They stopped!” exclaimed Fangyu, who stayed focused on the task at hand—finding Harper and Kwon. “Many miles ahead but not far off the road. I can take us there.”
Dr. Zeng began to slap the top of the dashboard. “Go, nephew. Hurry!”
Chapter Two
Sherpas’ Retreat
Lhasa, Tibet, China
Harper and Kwon met the rest of the Sherpas. In the distance, they could hear the high-frequency shriek of sirens. Unfamiliar with the area, it was difficult for them to discern the direction the vehicles were traveling. The Sherpas, on the other hand, were more attuned to them. They’d often been chased by the local security police during their nights of street racing.