The "Pandemic" Crystal Ball: Quarantine, Selfishness & TB

Over the weekend, "Pandemic" aired on the Hallmark Channel across the United States, both Saturday and Sunday night. My wife and I wrote the screenplay which tells the story of a passenger who dies on a plane flight from Australia to Los Angeles of a bird-flu type of illness, infecting his fellow passengers, causing a quarantine first of the plane, then the entire city. And, without revealing the ending completely, the ending resolution has something to do with TB.

Today comes word from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about a case involving a U.S. citizen who traveled on two international flights, probably infected his fellow passengers with a rare form of TB (XDR-TB) which was recently defined as a subtype of multiple-drug resistant tuberculosis. It can be fatal. In any case, Here is the story as CNN reports it today.

As with all TB, the disease can be spread through the air. "In this case, the infected patient traveled on two trans-Atlantic air flights and, in doing so, may have exposed passengers and crew to XDR-TB," the agency said.

"A federal quarantine order has been issued and CDC is currently collaborating with U.S., state and local health departments, international ministries of health, the airline industry, and WHO (World Health Organization)."

Sometimes life imitates art and vice-versa. The Fox News article has a couple of other similarities. For starters, the man who carried the disease has been put in respiratory isolation.

"I don't recall us doing this since 1963," said Gerberding. "We want to balance personal liberties with public health and, because this organism is so potentially serious, especially to those who have reduced immunity, our responsibility is to err on the side of caution."

Imagine, by the way, if he wasn't the sole incident but was one of thousands and thousands who needed this level of care or isolation. The other thing is that this particular passenger doesn't appear to have been very concerned about anybody else's exposure.

"The patient felt his personal agenda was highly relevant to him," she said. "The CDC was not aware he was traveling. We were surprised the patient left the country."

This is very consistent with the story we told in "Pandemic." We had a character, Jack Hendler, who felt his work as a Brentwood real estate agent was more important than public safety and broke the quarantine, becoming a "Typhoid Jack" across Los Angeles. All you have to do is to observe people's selfish, immature and dangerous driving habits around here to imagine that someone who is supposed to cool it in a quarantine would decide the rules didn't apply to them.

Should we be afraid? Yeah, probably...

Comments

[John R. Grout]

This reminds me of a subtle plot line in "The Star Beast", one of Robert Heinlein's better juveniles. While hotshot Sergei Greenberg is sitting in for Mr. Henry Gladstone Kiku, the career professional running Earth's Department of Spatial Affairs, a staffer asked him to allow the Venerian foreign minister to leave a quarantined ship to attend a diplomatic conference. Aware of the political consequences, Greenberg tells the staffer to ask the minister to attend the conference in an isolation suit, which would allow him to be portrayed as a hero unwilling to expose Earth to Venerian diseases. Later on, Heinlein threw in an offhand reference to the foreign minister's funeral!