Read Online THE VIRON CONSPIRACY (JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS #4) by Lawrence de Maria - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Lawrence de Maria
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quickly flatten a Westerner in New York and London.
The first victims that Dr. Venkataraman saw after arriving in Thakkar a week after the outbreak were a young mother named Anunitha Sule and her six-year-old daughter, Rubaina. Both had the same flu-like symptoms that the previous 20 victims had presented before the Gauhati team set up a small diagnostic and treatment clinic in a set of trailers and tents provided by India’s Pandemic Intelligence Service. The P.I.S. was a new department created with the help of the Center for Disease Control in the United States. It was designed to not only deal with the 1,200 epidemics that annually scourged India’s 1.3 billion inhabitants, but to also prevent them from exploding into worldwide threats, or pandemics.
Both the Sule woman and her daughter were in extreme distress when he first saw them, but Dr. Venkataraman was confident they would respond to the kind of advanced medical treatment not available to the first patients, of whom approximately 30 percent died. He dosed them with antibiotics to counter secondary bacterial infections, added some antivirals and provided them with liquids and food intravenously. At first, the interventions seemed to be working. While they remained listless, their color improved and they were even able to eat some solid food. Thus encouraged, the doctor even went so far as to tell Anunitha Sule’s worried husband that the crisis had apparently passed.
That was a mistake he would not make again. Both the woman and her child died the next morning in convulsions and he was forced to try to explain the unexplainable to the stunned man.
The pattern repeated itself, over and over. Victims came in, were stabilized, and either lived or died in the same proportion as those who had not received proper treatment. It made no sense. The mortality rate was brutal, although not as bad as with Ebola and the other viruses, but the fact that medical intervention didn’t seem to matter went against reason. Moreover, the survivors all seemed to be debilitated neurologically in some manner. Many exhibited tremors in the limbs and mental impairment.
It would remain to be seen if those effects of the disease diminished over time. Venkataraman surely hoped so. An illness that killed 30 percent of its victims and left the other 70 percent permanently disabled was too terrible to contemplate.
Blood, urine, feces, skin and saliva samples were sent off to various laboratories, and while they, as expected, revealed an incredible plethora of noxious pathogens, none seemed capable of causing the physical deterioration the doctors and technicians were seeing in the slowly dwindling population of Thakkar. And it was dwindling. What started as an isolated case, became a trickle, and was now a flood. Most of village’s 364 residents had some form of the mysterious disease, which caused vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration, high-fever, hallucinations, and in the 30% of victims it killed, violent convulsions. Young children and old people seemed particularly vulnerable, and died at a higher rate than others. That was to be expected. Nature culled the weakest from the herd. But a fair number of relatively healthy adults, male and female, also succumbed.
Every time the Gauhati medical team thought they discovered a possible pathogenic culprit or disease vector, someone who didn’t fit the paradigm got sick. For the first time in his experience, Venkataraman began to sense a feeling of panic among the doctors, nurses and scientists working with him. Thankfully, the fear quickly subsided, because the affliction, whatever it was, had one saving grace. It was apparently not airborne, and there was a growing consensus that other normal vectors — insect and animal bites, contaminated drinking and bathing water, sexual transmission and the like — were also not to blame. That gave authorities the confidence to transfer victims from Thakkar to the Gauhati Medical Center and other
The first victims that Dr. Venkataraman saw after arriving in Thakkar a week after the outbreak were a young mother named Anunitha Sule and her six-year-old daughter, Rubaina. Both had the same flu-like symptoms that the previous 20 victims had presented before the Gauhati team set up a small diagnostic and treatment clinic in a set of trailers and tents provided by India’s Pandemic Intelligence Service. The P.I.S. was a new department created with the help of the Center for Disease Control in the United States. It was designed to not only deal with the 1,200 epidemics that annually scourged India’s 1.3 billion inhabitants, but to also prevent them from exploding into worldwide threats, or pandemics.
Both the Sule woman and her daughter were in extreme distress when he first saw them, but Dr. Venkataraman was confident they would respond to the kind of advanced medical treatment not available to the first patients, of whom approximately 30 percent died. He dosed them with antibiotics to counter secondary bacterial infections, added some antivirals and provided them with liquids and food intravenously. At first, the interventions seemed to be working. While they remained listless, their color improved and they were even able to eat some solid food. Thus encouraged, the doctor even went so far as to tell Anunitha Sule’s worried husband that the crisis had apparently passed.
That was a mistake he would not make again. Both the woman and her child died the next morning in convulsions and he was forced to try to explain the unexplainable to the stunned man.
The pattern repeated itself, over and over. Victims came in, were stabilized, and either lived or died in the same proportion as those who had not received proper treatment. It made no sense. The mortality rate was brutal, although not as bad as with Ebola and the other viruses, but the fact that medical intervention didn’t seem to matter went against reason. Moreover, the survivors all seemed to be debilitated neurologically in some manner. Many exhibited tremors in the limbs and mental impairment.
It would remain to be seen if those effects of the disease diminished over time. Venkataraman surely hoped so. An illness that killed 30 percent of its victims and left the other 70 percent permanently disabled was too terrible to contemplate.
Blood, urine, feces, skin and saliva samples were sent off to various laboratories, and while they, as expected, revealed an incredible plethora of noxious pathogens, none seemed capable of causing the physical deterioration the doctors and technicians were seeing in the slowly dwindling population of Thakkar. And it was dwindling. What started as an isolated case, became a trickle, and was now a flood. Most of village’s 364 residents had some form of the mysterious disease, which caused vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration, high-fever, hallucinations, and in the 30% of victims it killed, violent convulsions. Young children and old people seemed particularly vulnerable, and died at a higher rate than others. That was to be expected. Nature culled the weakest from the herd. But a fair number of relatively healthy adults, male and female, also succumbed.
Every time the Gauhati medical team thought they discovered a possible pathogenic culprit or disease vector, someone who didn’t fit the paradigm got sick. For the first time in his experience, Venkataraman began to sense a feeling of panic among the doctors, nurses and scientists working with him. Thankfully, the fear quickly subsided, because the affliction, whatever it was, had one saving grace. It was apparently not airborne, and there was a growing consensus that other normal vectors — insect and animal bites, contaminated drinking and bathing water, sexual transmission and the like — were also not to blame. That gave authorities the confidence to transfer victims from Thakkar to the Gauhati Medical Center and other
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