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1 " The school stank of Lysol, and several times a day they all had to line up and wash their hands. Clean hands save lives was the message being hammered into them. When it came to spreading infection, they were informed, they themselves--school kids--were the biggest culprits. Even if you weren't sick yourself, you could shed germs and make other people sick. Cole was struck by the word shed. The idea that he could shed invisible germs the way Sadie shed dog hairs was awesome to him. He pictured the germs as strands of hair with legs like centipedes, invisible but crawling everywhere.Minibottles of sanitizer were distributed for use when soap and water weren't available. Everyone was supposed to receive a new bottle each day, but the supply ran out quickly--not just at school but all over. Among teachers this actually brought relief, because the white, slightly sticky lotion was so like something else that some kids couldn't resist. Gobs started appearing on chairs, on the backs of girls' jeans, or even in their hair, and one boy caused an uproar by squirting it all over his face.Never Sneeze into Your Hand, read signs posted everywhere. And: Keep Your Hands to Yourself (these signs had actually been there before but now had a double meaning).If you had to sneeze, you should do it into a tissue. If you didn't have a tissue, you should use the crook of your arm."But that's vomitous," squealed Norris (one of the two whispering blondes).These rules were like a lot of other school rules: nobody paid much attention to them.Some school employees started wearing rubber gloves. Cafeteria servers, who already wore gloves, started wearing surgical masks as well.Cole lost his appetite. He couldn't stop thinking about hospitals. Flesh being cut open, flesh being sewn up.How could you tell if you had the flu? The symptoms were listed on the board in every room: Fever. Aches. Chills. Dry cough. What must you do if you had these symptoms? YOU MUST STAY HOME. "
― Sigrid Nunez , Salvation City
2 " W.H.O. Officials Call Pandemic 'Inevitable.'" "Study Shows U.S. Ill-Equipped for Major Pandemic.""Dysfunctional Health Care System Would Doom Millions, Doctors Say.""A Catastrophe Worse Than Hurricane Katrina, Some Experts Fear."Cole clicked and clicked. There were thousands of articles, more than anyone could ever read. Cole was surprised so many of them were from long ago, way back before 2000. Had his parents read any of them? He supposed they must have, but he couldn't remember them ever talking about a pandemic. It was not on the list of things they were always worried about, like identity theft or climate change or how they were going to pay for his education.The diseases his parents worried about were cancer (his mother's big fear; both her parents had died of it) and Alzheimer's (his father's father had it)."New Flu Strain Similar to Deadly 1918 Flu, Study Says."Mom! Dad!They stood on either side of his chair and stared at his laptop screen."Oh dear," said his father, though his tone was more like "ho-hum." "Not this again. I know it sounds bad, Cole, but I wouldn't get too excited. We go through one of these scares every couple of years. But remember, we're not living in 1918. We've got resources people didn't have back then.""Yeah, and we've also got a lot more crowding, Dad. And people traveling a lot more and coming in contact with each other all over the world. It says here an epidemic today would probably be a lot worse than it was back then."Cole sensed, rather than saw, his parents exchange a look above his head."So maybe you'll be the one who grows up to be the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who develops the vaccine that saves us all," his mother said. "
3 " Pastor Wyatt still shakes hands with people. He pays no attention to the warning to switch to the elbow bump. Cole remembers learning about this while he was still in regular school. Public health officials were trying to get people to switch because touching elbows did not spread infection the way touching hands did. Cole knows there are many people who have switched, but he sees the elbow bump only when he is around strangers. The people he sees every day make fun of the elbow bump. They shake hands and they hug one another, even through Pastor Wyatt says the disease that spared them all this time around is neither the last nor the worst of its kind. Other plagues are coming, he says, smiling. And he thinks they will be here soon. "
4 " People must learn that shaking another person's hand is not a friendly thing to do. It is not a friendly thing to put other people at risk for infectious diseases."She and several other people were shown demonstrating the elbow bump, and the auditorium got raucous again."We must also consider limiting the use of coins and paper money. For this, too, may cause diseases to spread. We must use technology and human ingenuity to develop ways so that, in their daily public transactions, people touch one another as little as possible. Ideally, we also want to touch as few buttons and handles and knobs as possible. "
5 " But maybe his father was right. Maybe what had happened in 1918 could never happen again. "U.S. Reveals Detailed Flu Disaster Plans." Cole decided to make this the topic for his research report. Plans for manufacturing and distributing vaccines and other medications. Plans to quarantine the sick and to call up extra doctors and nurses and to replace absent workers with retired workers so that businesses wouldn't have to shut down. Plans to keep public transportation and electricity and telecommunications and other vital services operating and food and water and other necessities from running out. Plans to mobilize troops (for Cole this was the only exciting part) in the event of mass panic or violence.One day he would ask Pastor Wyatt why, despite all these plans, everything had gone so wrong."Son, that is just the thing. That is what people did not--and still do not--get. There is no way you can count on the government, even if it's a very good government. The government isn't going to save you, it isn't going to save anyone. There's no way you can count on other people in a situation like we had. People afraid of losing their lives--or, Lord knows, even just their toys--they'll panic. Even fine, decent Christian folk--you can never know for sure what they'll do next. So I say, love your neighbor, help your fellow man all you can, but don't ever count on any other human being. Count on God."What Cole didn't know was that most of the plans he read about that night would have been sufficient only for an emergency lasting a few weeks. "
6 " Cole hopes to go around the world one day. One of his favorite words is explorer. During the pandemic people weren't allowed to travel anywhere unless they absolutely had to, and even now it's not the way it was before. There aren't as many airplanes. There aren't as many buses or trains, and there aren't as many cars on the highways. "
7 " From Addy in Berlin came the news that all social gatherings had been banned except for weddings and funerals, where the number of people could not be higher than twelve. ("I wonder if that's counting the bride and groom," Cole's mother said, and his father joked: "How about the corpse?") "
8 " Later many people would say that if the schools had been closed right away, lives might have been saved. But at the time people argued that you couldn't just close the schools, because so many parents worked. If they had to stay home to take care of their kids, a lot of them would lose income, maybe even their jobs. Not to mention that businesses were already shorthanded because of all the employees out sick. Closing the schools might just make things worse. "
9 " First they warn everyone to wear a mask. Then we find out unless it's a special kind of mask it's not going to protect you at all." "It's not just a question of beds. There's not enough linen, not enough gloves, gowns, hypodermic needles, disinfectant, meds, you name it. Not enough ambulances, not enough ventilators or other equipment. Hospitals are even running out of food.""It's not like every other bad thing stopped happening to make room for the flu. People are still getting cancer and having heart attacks and strokes and road accidents. The idea that we could handle any kind of surge on top of that--whoever's fantasy that was, it was never going to happen.""The retired workers they were depending on to take over for the workers out sick? Very few of those people ever showed. The volunteer doctors and nurses and the other helping hands--they aren't showing up, either. It's not like 9/11. There aren't any heroes rushing toward the danger. The danger is everywhere, and everyone's running scared.""Let's face it, this is America. Anything that's bad for business, people don't want to hear. When it comes to money or doing the right thing, most people are going to choose money. Close up shop for months till they can make a new vaccine? How many businesses would still be alive after that?""This disaster proves what some of us have been saying about America all along: everything is broken. "
10 " Because the second wave was so much more severe than the first, a lot of people refused to believe it could be the same disease. It had to be terrorism. They didn't care what medical experts kept telling them, about how it was the nature of influenza to occur in waves and that there was nothing about this pandemic, terrible though it was, that wasn't happening more or less as had long been predicted. No, not bioterrorism, others said, but a virus that had escaped from a laboratory. These were the same people who believed that both Lyme disease and West Nile virus were caused by germs that had escaped many years ago from a government lab off the coast of Long Island. They scoffed at the assertion that it was impossible to say for sure where the flu had begun because cases had appeared in several different countries at exactly the same time. Cover-up! Everyone knew the government was involved in the development of bioweapons. And although the Americans were not the only ones who were working on such weapons, the belief that they were somehow to blame--that the monster germ had most likely been created in an American lab, for American military purposes--would outlive the pandemic itself.In any case, according to a poll, eighty-two percent of Americans believed the government knew more about the flu than it was saying. And the number of people who declared themselves dead set against any vaccine the government came up with was steadily growing. "
11 " She worried about his father's fever, but couldn't say how high it was, the thermometer being one of several items that had managed somehow to get lost in the move from Chicago. And there were no more thermometers to be found at the drugstore. And once they'd used up the aspirin they had on hand, that was it. Like surgical masks and thermometers, cold and flu medication had run out everywhere. Rubbing alcohol, mouthwash, bleach--anything containing germ killer was also sold out. "
12 " His father used to accuse his mother of not being able to let anything go. She needed to learn to put the past behind her, instead of dwelling on what couldn't be changed. "Don't be like your mother," he warned Cole, "unless you want to be depressed. "
13 " In city after city, all over the world, the number of people appearing in surgical masks kept multiplying. Those still capable of frivolity added illustrations: luscious lips, stuck-out tongues, piano-keyboard smiles, and--most popular--vampire fangs. In Indianapolis, after hundreds of people fell ill over one weekend, no one was permitted to go out without a mask. But--as happened almost everywhere--there weren't enough masks to go around. Some made do with scarves or other pieces of cloth, or they tried taping gauze or paper to their faces. A lot of people just ignored the rule--and got away with it, the police being out sick in droves. "
14 " Say what you would about the pandemic, at least it had helped slow down the rat race. It had also got people thinking more about the world to come. In communities like Salvation City, life had become simpler and more purpose-driven. People were sticking closer to home, spending more time with their families. And everywhere church attendance had soared. "
15 " But compared to Germany, the U.S. might as well be in the Third World, especially if we're talking about health care. Why did every other advanced country get through the pandemic so much better than the U.S.? Maybe you don't feel it so much here in the sticks, but out there people are still really suffering. "
16 " They don't read, and they can't write to save their lives. They've never heard of most of the presidents of the United States, they think America won the war in Vietnam, they think Prohibition was a law that made it illegal to own slaves.That was Cole's father, fuming about his students. Cole suspects at least some of this could also be said about Tracy.And it's not just what they don't know, it's what they don't want to know.Tracy is what his father would call intellectually lazy. "
17 " Let’s face it, this is America. Anything that’s bad for business, people don’t want to hear. When it comes to money or doing the right thing, most people are going to choose money. Close up shop for months till they can make a new vaccine? How many businesses would still be alive after that? "
