The Last Centurion Read online

  The meeting went on for over six hours. No resolution was found. It didn't really matter. By the time adults stepped in, all the doses were useless.

  They were useless. The protein chains they depended upon to do their work were destroyed by heat in less than the six hours it took to have the meeting. By the time a decision was made (days later) by the governor of California, it was so far too late it was insane.

  There were, however, one million remaining doses. They were then rationed to those who "truly needed them." This included everyone in county government down to trash collectors. (Although those guys earned their doses later. Those that didn't desert.) And, of course, the head of county health.

  There went fifteen million doses of serum.

  Intermediate: St. Louis, MO.

  Six million doses. Storage for three hundred thousand.

  Upon receiving the shipment, the warehouse manager took one look at it and ordered the trucker to drop the reefer. When the trucker refused (it was a leased reefer) the manager explained that what was on there was vital medicines, they did not have storage and that if necessary he would have a cop shoot the trucker if he tried to drive away with the reefer.

  (This was in a deposition, witness the truck driver, Morell Hermon, who asked for and received one of the shots while he was there. He stated that at the time he was angry at the decision because it caused him some personal grief and economic hardship, but wanted to thank the warehouse manager for being so farsighted. Alas, his boss was less so.)

  Thus the six million doses were saved for the nonce.

  The head of county health, however, chose to obey the letter of the Executive Order (big essay possible on constitutional issues there but we've had talking heads on that one for so many years I'm sick of it) and set up a distribution network for the County Health Branch offices. Would have been a decent one. If they hadn't gotten fucking swamped. Emergency services got their own distribution (more or less by walking in and saying "Give us vaccine. Now." at the warehouse), got the shots spread around to all emergency service personnel (and in some cases friends and family members according to more depositions) and eventually started raiding the warehouse to set up shot centers at firehouses, police stations, etc. They even hit a few schools before the Plague hit.

  The county health centers?

  There were only a few real riots. A riot being defined as ten or more people in a mass fight. Only one that really could call itself a riot when the Springfield Street county health office was burned to the ground. Total of six deaths. None of them healthworkers, by the way. They were evacuated by the police when the situation went critical.

  Figure six people in an office. There were nine offices. The population was over five million. Worse, they played by the letter of the law in distribution. Only one or two of them were "qualified" to give immunizations.

  The lines were . . . astronomical. Truly ludicrous. People camping out for days. They still were when the Plague hit (also when the riots started) and the conditions were ripe for spread. The very people most determined to get vaccinated . . . were some of the first to get infected.

  Total distribution in the county? 138,000 doses. Some 60% by emergency services personnel who were not authorized to do so. Population? 5.2 million. Deaths? Who knows. Estimates are 2.8.

  It's times like these that I'm glad granpappy taught me how to make a still and the real use in the world for potatoes.

  You'll notice I didn't mention deaths in L.A. That's because, really, nobody knows. As of last census there is a population in Orange County, CA of five hundred thousand, mostly centered around the harbor area, Long Beach and Malibu. But H5N1, bad as it is, does NOT kill 90% of the population. Where are the rest of the former inhabitants? Well, there were significant death rates due to the Freeze (Californians were NOT prepared for the winters) and people just moved. Fled in the first wave of the Plague, moved out to try to find better climes (or better support structure) at the Freeze . . . One of the census questions that was part of a statistical sample was "Were you a resident of your current living area prior to the events starting in 2019?" Nationwide the average was 82% "Yes." In L.A. County the average is 63% "No." L.A. County, effectively, depopulated and has been slowly filling back up. Hell, the weather there is still better than Blue Earth, trust me. If I thought it was fucking cold in Minnesota growing up . . .

  But I digress.

  Best:

  Everybody knows the answer: The Big Apple.

  Damn if a Democrat mayor didn't hit it right on the fucking nosey. Admittedly, he had the example of Giuliani on 9/11. But he did what was right and damn the consequences.

  Most people know the story but I'll tell it for those who are interested in my take or who have just terminally been out of the loop. (I've got a couple of friends who have just come out of hiding. There may be more.)

  Upon receipt of the vaccines, the central distribution manager did the same thing as St. Louis. "Oh, no, you are NOT fucking taking the reefers away."

  Peripheral note. The reefers were coming from the manufacturer, Winslow Pharmaceuticals, who was being paid to handle the distribution by the federal government. They'd also been paid to do the long-term stockpiling. Some people might have been following the investigations and trials surrounding the distribution. My take. The feds paid Winslow to pay truckers using temporary rented reefers to distribute the vaccine. Winslow followed their directives because that was what it was directed to do and was being paid to do. One of the Winslow logistics guys is on record (e-mail exchange with surgeon general's office) protesting the use of temporary reefers for the very reason of what happened in L.A. But that's what they were told and paid to do. Trying the CEO, etc, of Winslow was criminal in itself. The fact that no federal officials were tried makes it worse. The fuck-up was at the fed level, not Winslow.

  County health looked at the Executive Order and started to do what was ordered: distribute only to county health offices. Mayor Cranslow stepped in and said "Not only no, but HELL no." His exact words from the minutes of the meeting were: "Just because you are told to commit suicide doesn't mean you have to stick the pistol in your mouth and pull the damned trigger."

  Within two days, a distribution system was set up (under a former Army S-4 proving that all S-4s are not lame-brain dickbreaths). Each hospital, county health office, physicians' office (to include Doc-In-The-Boxes and even psychiatrists and plastic surgeons) and hospital was given an initial supply, amounting to forty percent of the on-hand at the warehouse and based on their best estimate of initial requests. Every emergency service person was vaccinated and called in on mandatory overtime. They even recruited fourth-year med students and set up street-level vaccination centers.

  During this time there were repeated emergency broadcasts. A replication of one:

  "There is a high probability that the New York area will soon experience cases of the Asian Bird Flu. Two times out of three, this disease will kill you. In no more than (started at three days) a distribution system will be in place so that everyone in the New York area can be vaccinated. If you do not get vaccinated, you have a two in three chance of dying. Even the stupidest gambler doesn't go for those odds. Do not try to get it now. Your city government is working as fast as it can to get the doses ready. When we're ready, it will be available at all county health offices as well as hospitals, fire stations and even your personal physician. Don't rush, there is still time. But get the shot. This has been Mayor Bill Cranslow. You pay me to make sure you stay alive. Let's both work on that."

  In two days the system was in place. Then New Yorkers were told to get the shot and not panic.

  Get the shot. Do not panic. There are no cases in the U.S. yet. But get the shot. And do not panic.

  Get the shot. Do not panic.

  Over and over again. Along with "let's work together on that."

  And it worked. Everywhere there was a rush the first day. But the shots were everywhere and cops, firemen, meter maids, garba
ge collectors, were standing by to distribute more as stocks dwindled. The biggest bottleneck was the supply of syringes and peripherals. Syringe disposal boxes ran out the first day and never really caught up. New Yorkers reacted, adapted and overcame. They made them out of red-painted bleach bottles. New Yorkers took time off from work to go to their fire station. They went to their physician's offices. They went to hospitals.

  Health care workers were overworked and often frustrated, but they dealt. And the broadcasts continued.

  Schools. The H5N1 could be administered either with a syringe or with the less common air-gun. Pupils in schools were lined up and given their injections, airgun, mass production style by order of the mayor. There were some protests and threats of lawsuits. I'm not sure what happened with most of those. I suspect a lot of the protesting parents didn't get the shots themselves. For reasons that will become clear, later, there were and are a tremendous number of orphans in our great country. If you haven't taken one in, look up your local government foster care system and sign up. It's a lot easier these days than before the Plague and there are a hell of a lot more needy children. We've got four. What have you done for the world today?

  Within two weeks the crush was over. Every New Yorker that was going to get immunized did get immunized. And they had spares. Not enough to help places like fucking L.A., but they had spares.

  Mayor Cranslow, by the way, was reelected last year in a true landslide. His campaign slogan? "Let's work together." The bastard makes me question being a Republican sometimes. If, when, he runs for President he's got my vote. I'll work together with him by fucking God.

  But let's get back to the Executive Order.

  "These vaccines will be available to anyone who feels it necessary to get a bird flu shot."

  Okay, here we go into some tedious but necessary shit. Spread prevention games theory.

  The basic premise of infectious disease spread prevention is sort of like a game of Othello.

  I need to explain Othello, don't I?

  Sigh.

  In Othello each player gets a bunch of rocks, colored black on one side and white on the other, and plays them on a board filled with indentations or squares. If there is a black rock on a square and a white rock on either side of the square, the black rock becomes white and vice versa and so on. Basically, you try to surround your opponent.

  Spread prevention works the same way. Say that a person has the flu and they only see two other people a day, say in an office. (I know, impossible, but work with me here.) The infected person is the black rock. They can only infect the other two people around them. If both of them are immunized (and the immunization is good) and they wash their hands and . . . Look, work with me. If they can't get the flu, they can't pass it on. So whether the person who's infected lives or dies, it stops with him.

  That's the critically important thing to mass immunization. You have to create enough white rocks that the black rocks can't flip them. They can't get past them to uninfected portions of the populace. The problem being, hardly anybody ever deals with only two people all the time. Think about your day. You deal with hundreds of people every day. Or at least dozens. And they deal with dozens and they deal with dozens.

  That, as any school kid these days knows, is how disease spreads. To stop it, you have to cut off its ability to infect. If you find a "patient zero" fast enough, or a location zero at least, you can try to encircle it, what's called "ring immunization." Which was, sort of, what the Chinese tried. They just did it very badly.

  Now, don't get me wrong, there were a lot of people (obviously from the above) who wanted to get immunized. Maybe, if the distribution hadn't been so cocked up, enough to stop the spread.

  But probably not. Look, it's a complicated computer model but to stop a major spread you have to have 93% of a population (statistical) immunized. 93%. You can't get 93% of any population to decide on the color of the sky. The only way to truly stop a disease, butt cold, is mass, forced immunization. You've got to hit everybody you can get your stinking hands on if it means breaking down doors.

  Let's take a look at our "optimum" example, NYC. NYC, good as it was, did not, not NOT act as a white rock. Why?

  Illegal aliens, homeless, the criminal class, idiotic nature-loving vegans (sorry, highly redundant there), big-shot lawyers and stockbrokers who "didn't have the time for this crap . . . " None of them got immunized. And because flu doesn't actually have to infect someone to get passed (it can get passed through handshakes even if the person with it on their hands doesn't get it) you'd be surprised how fast a big-time lawyer can get it from a street-person. Street person to drug dealer, drug dealer to drug dealer's boss, boss to his lawyer. Doesn't have to be on their hands, can be on cash. Put in a waiter in the middle if it makes you feel better.

  Robust diseases are slippery fuckers. They will get your ass if there's not that 93% of "white rocks" around you.

  Fortunately, with the exception of illegal aliens the people in NYC who didn't get immunized are, sorry and being as callous as fuck, not worth the immunization. If you were too stupid to get it, stockbrokers and lawyers, you're better off out of this world. Criminals that were afraid they'd be arrested if they went to county health? Lessee, five days for violation of a restraining order or death. Hmmm . . . Homeless? There was even a program to go around offering it to them in their "habitual areas." Mostly by firefighters and cops which might have put some of them off. Hardly any got the shot. Why? Most homeless had mental health problems. (For you youngsters that grew up in the Post-Plague world they're what are called, again, bums.) There used to be a shit-pot full of them. I mean, like, dozens on any street in any major city. Hundreds of thousands of them. Most were too whacked to understand or believe about the flu. It was all a government plot. More alien mind control rays. Whatever.

  Most of them died. World ends at six. Poorest hardest hit. Go figure.

  And, sorry, given all the rest that died that tried, intelligently and aggressively, to live, don't got much for the homeless and the rest of those idiots. There's a reason I live in Blue Earth again. All the planning in the world doesn't help if you're not allowed to have the medicine that will save your life. The homeless in NYC, and the rest that decided "I don't trust it," "I don't have the time" . . . Got nothing fucking for them. Got nothing.

  So there we have the stupidity of sentence two. If you're not going to mass immunize, you're not going to stop a disease. It worked with smallpox and polio. It might have worked with a bunch of other diseases, but we got weak. There's a program in the works right now to get started on slamming the door on everything possible, that is everything that transmits only through humans and domesticated animals. Don't know if it will ever work but it's worth a shot.

  So, Warrick you pinch-faced lying incompetent bitch, let's take a look at sentence three.

  "My advisors recommend them primarily for the elderly and the young."

  What advisors? Her advisors for a situation like this were the National Science Advisor, the Director of the National Institute for Health (NIH), the Surgeon General, the Director of the Center for Disease Control and the Commander of USAMRIID.

  All five have testified under oath at this point about the decision process, such as it was, leading to 423. Two, the National Science Director and the Surgeon General, took the Fifth. Fuckers. The other three, including the only two epidemiologists consulted, have, however, spoken at length.

  The first meeting was called by the National Science Advisor and included, along with various hangers on, the Director of the CDC, the NSD, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Surgeon General. At that meeting, the President announced that the vaccine was to be distributed immediately and that it should be available through county health services. And that it should be given to the young and old first.

  Note: This was before any input from the advisors. This according to both the DCDC and the Secretary of Homeland Security.

  The DCDC has stated that he demurr
ed after it was clear that neither the NSD or the SG were going to. Why?

  First, there was a plan already set up for vaccine distribution. Called, incredibly, the Emergency Vaccine Distribution Plan (incredibly because it actually made sense), it had been in place for years and regularly updated. It was a complicated distro but, effectively, it spread the vaccine through both military and emergency civilian channels to all healthcare providers. There were identification methods. Following initial distribution there was a forced immunization program as a sub-codicil noboby wanted to really use. It was cumbersome. Everyone knew it was cumbersone and that it would take at least a week to get the vaccine down to civilians. But it was designed to work. Might not have, but it was the Plan.

  In the first three minutes of the meeting, the Prez had thrown the Plan right out the window. So much of sentence one and two. This is really about sentence three.

  Bird Flu was strange. Most flus, the major deaths occurred in the old and the young. And, don't get me wrong, the bird flu killed off both groups.

  But like the earlier Spanish Flu, bird flu was not a secondary killer, it was a primary. Secondary and primary . . . Sigh.

  Most flus don't kill you. They just get you very sick and, notably, flood your lungs with fluids. Secondary viral and bacterial infections then get in those fluids and kill some people through pneumonia. Notably . . . the old and the young. Thus, the deaths are from secondary infections. Secondary killers.

  There are very rare flus, though, which are primary killers. Death qua death, the Grim Reaper, Pushin' Up Daisies, occurs because specific portions of the brain (we don't need all of our brains, just ask Al Gore) die. There are various ways that those portions can die; anything that cuts off oxygen to them for long enough will do it. (Such as, say, having your head cut off.) But something has to kill them.

  Besides all the usual stuff that bird flu did, it spread systemically. First there was the danger of pneumonia. But even if you survived that, it tended to hang on. Blood vessels are designed to keep fluids in. Infected vessels let the fluids out, they accumulate in lungs, in body cavities, kidneys fail, brain swells, pressure kills neurons, breathing stops, etc. If your immune system couldn't kill it, it got into the brain. Fluid builds up, pressure on brain causes dementia, then strokelike symptoms . . . And then, well, you quickly went mad and then died. Thus the pattern of get sick, seem to recover, relapse, die.