Chapter Two - Hysteria
I haven't been back to work since that Wednesday over six months ago. The cases of those affected began to grow exponentially. After only a week several hundred thousand people had already died. Even though some of the first cases had been broadcasted about a rural farming community and that there were affected people in every corner of the world, the speed of the disease seemed to spread much faster in areas with a thick population density. The irony was that hospitals were not only immune from the disease, but infected individuals who went to the hospital only seemed to succumb to the disease more quickly. Those being transported by ambulance sometimes never even made it to the hospital even with the fastest of speeds and the loudest of sirens.
The President had died within the first week of the illness, soon followed by the Vice President and the Speaker of the House. At first everyone was put on a curfew, or more like house arrest. Because the CDC did not know how the disease was spreading or have any type of cure, the best thing for the people was to enforce Marshall Law. Ironically individuals who went out looting usually wound up dying before they made it away with their goods, their bodies found in the stores and on the streets, blood seeping from their ears and a look of inexplicable anguish upon their faces.
The military and police stopped responding to alarms and calls because it seemed to only trigger the disease in those responding. The call centers were also shut down because those taking calls began suffering symptoms.
Sadly it seemed like few were immune. A nurse at a hospital in Detroit went back to her station to feed the newborn babies only to find that they had all died in only the short time she had stepped away to deliver one infant to her mother. This was only the first of similar infant deaths, and it sent fear and outrage through the masses and in the panic many members of the CDC were attacked and killed. If the disease wasn't enough, panic was beginning to turn people on each other.
But there were some people who were in fact immune, or at least seemed to have a very slow progression of the disease once the symptoms began to show. Individuals who were hearing impaired seemed not to suffer any effects to the disease, which was the first sign of hope for the CDC is trying to figure out a cause and a cure. The theory first emerged when all but one employee in a law office in Louisville, KY died when the fire alarm went off due to a burnt pot pie left in the company's toaster oven a few minute too long. The only employee to survive was a paralegal who had been deaf since birth.
"I knew the fire alarm had gone off because the emergency lights came on, but I could also smell the smoke. At first I thought that everyone was in a panic out of fear, but no one was trying to leave the building. At first everyone was covering their ears, I have never heard a fire alarm but I assume it is probably quite loud. But everyone looked in pain. When I tried to help one of my colleagues to the exit she lashed out at me. When I tried to help her again she pushed me into the wall. I thought she was going to come at me again, but instead began to hit her head against the wall. I was scared and I ran out of the building at that point. When I got outside the fire department had arrived, only they were not going into the building. I begged them to help my friends but they stood there looking at themselves, looking at me. They let them all die."
The elderly or individuals wearing FM units (hearing implants) seemed to have a much slower progression with the disease, one young man in his early 20's with a hearing implant had lived for nearly two months while the CDC tried every possible test on him to find the connection between his hearing loss and the disease.
Once the word leaked out that those with hearing impairments were less likely to contract the disease or that the progression of the disease was slower, a mass hysteria seemed to spread throughout the world. Hospitals in countries all around the world were taking drastic measures to prolong life in those who were symptomatic, rupturing ear drums and inserting large plugs into the ear canals of the infected. The result of the procedures wound up being quite the opposite of their hypothesis and death usually occurred before the individual was out of the OR.
People were dying, and there didn't seem to be a cure in sight.