The Phoenix Variant

The Phoenix Variant

House mice are all pretty much the same, so I will call this all important mouse, "Mouse". On this particular day Mouse was foraging for food in the waste from the Phoenix Veteran's Administration Hospital when she came upon a tasty bit. Unfortunately, this tasty bit was tainted with the Covid-19 virus, which had come from an unlucky veteran who had served his country in Korea only to meet his demise from a virus invisible to the human eye.

After feasting, Mouse returned to her nest in a private storage facility that abutted the fence where the VA Hospital deposited its waste. Already the virus inside Mouse's body, for no particular reason, had taken a sharp right turn in the form of a mutation.

When the owner of the storage facility came to get ammo for his weekly shooting practice, he did not notice the virus laden mice feces atop the open cases of cartridges, and while getting ammo he also got some of Mouse’s feces on his hands and on his clothing. It was already on the ammo. At the shooting range with his buddies, he innocently and unknowingly introduced the Phoenix Variant to the world. I don’t want to think about how Mouse's feces got into the bodies of the shooters.

This was a world changing event. Although the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson vaccines were effective against the Phoenix Variant, only about half the U.S. adult population was fully vaccinated, and in other countries vaccinations were still a distant hope. The devastation the Phoenix Variant brought to the world was fast and efficient transmission of the virus to the unvaccinated including children, and an eighty percent mortality rate within days for the infected.

Within weeks the Phoenix Variant circled the globe leaving behind it the greatest carnage in the history of the world. There was no place to put the dead and dying, so their bodies littered the streets and previously vibrant cities became near instant wastelands. Plague art became a reflection of modern times. Those few who were vaccinated scrambled to get to safer areas and were fearful for their own welfare while watching in horror the fate of unvaccinated family and friends.

In the U.S. there was an immediate cry for vaccinations, but available supply quickly ran out because in the absence of local demand, the U.S.had sent all its “extra” supply to countries that wanted it. Now there was no way for a new round of vaccinations to get in front of the virus.

Marchand, a retired epidemiologist from CDC, from the comfort of his study in Potomac, Maryland, watched with sadness but without surprise, the steady stream of “breaking news” reports on the spread and deaths from the variant. The scenario was playing out exactly as epidemiologists had, for decades, described as a worst case scenario.

He noted that Maryland deaths and those in other highly vaccinated states seemed like only a trickle while deaths in less vaccinated states were horrendous. Hospitals had filled immediately with their beds functioning as little more than corridors to the morgue. They began referring patients to home hospice care in acknowledgement of their inability to treat the infected.

Marchand knew that eventually the virus would run its course, that the supply of people to infect would run out, or the virus would mutate again, this time to a benign variant. In the meantime, there was little anyone could do except try to get vaccinated before they got infected. Those who formerly eschewed masks were now having trouble finding them in time for them to help. Curfews and quarantines were only delaying tactics, and the variant would wait for people to emerge to attack them.

To keep balance in his life, Marchand turned off the news every day after supper at 6:30 p.m.

He retired to his study, poured himself a glass of Laphroaig scotch, no ice but a sprinkling of water, picked up and reflected on his wife’s silver heart shaped locket with the clip of her hair in it, and finally clicked on the library app on his tablet. Today, he was finishing up Stephen King's “Needful Things”.

Tomorrow he would turn the news back on, and do the only thing he could do, watch and wait.