The Rationing

40.

THE PRESIDENT HAD FLOWN TO LOS ANGELES THAT AFTERNOON, where he spent several hours before Air Force One took off for Australia, with a refueling stop scheduled in Hawaii. The national security team had made no decision with regard to the Chinese Dormigen offer, but they had decided that he should make the trip to Asia to preserve his “optionality.” If nothing else, flying to the South China Sea Conference would give the President a little leverage. We all recognized that if the Chinese understood the scale of the Capellaviridae crisis, the price for the “free” Dormigen would rise precipitously. The President was en route to Australia in part to keep up appearances, like an unhappy couple who put on a good face for Thanksgiving. Maybe the President would sign the South China Sea Agreement; maybe he would take the Chinese Dormigen instead. Flying to the region kept all the options open. Obviously we were in constant secure contact with him.

At about four a.m. on the day after I met with Sloan—one a.m. on the West Coast—The New Yorker posted a short “breaking story” on its website. In just a few paragraphs, the piece outlined the Dormigen shortage and the fatal outbreak of Capellaviridae. Because The New Yorker deemed the story “enormous and urgent,” the magazine had immediately enlisted a consortium of print and media news outlets to assist in the follow-up reporting. Just about every news outlet in the nation, and subsequently the world, was following up on The New Yorker story within an hour of the original post.

Some crucial details in those early stories were incorrect—fabulously so. First, most posts described Capellaviridae as “spreading,” giving the impression that it was a contagious disease. Second, some of the early reporting by Home Depot Media quoted unnamed “national security” officials who described the situation as “most likely a highly sophisticated terrorist attack.” The unnamed officials speculated that a hostile government or a terrorist organization (“or several such entities working in collaboration”) had introduced the Capellaviridae virus into the U.S. and was also responsible for the Long Beach warehouse fire that had caused the Dormigen shortage. Because the September 11 attacks had been unexpected and unusual, the public was primed to believe the next big attack could be equally imaginative and unprecedented. One anonymous official at the Department of Homeland Security laid out a grim scenario: “The worst case is that a hostile government or terrorist organization has introduced a pathogen that will kill us on a scale previously unimaginable. The best case is that the group responsible has an antidote and will hold us hostage until they get what they want.” This was what America woke up to.

In Asia, where it was late evening, government leaders were suddenly made aware of the magnitude of what was happening in the United States. China’s President Xing was addressing a convention of farm equipment manufacturers in Shanghai when an aide walked onto the stage and delivered him a note. President Xing excused himself, walked off the stage, and never returned.

41.

I WAS SLEEPING ON MY COUCH WHEN EVERY DEVICE I OWNED began to ping or beep. I had fallen asleep the night before after two beers, having watched mindless television as I mulled over my conversation with Huke, searching for clues. My thoughts kept skipping to the encounter with Sloan instead. The first text I saw was from the Chief of Staff: “Call me immediately. Urgent.” My mind raced, in part because I was trying to figure out where she was texting from. The President would have taken off from California some hours earlier, so the only possibility was that she was on Air Force One somewhere over the Pacific. That assumption turned out to be correct. Air Force One had taken off from Los Angeles around nine p.m. California time, midnight on the East Coast, so the President and senior staff, including the National Security Adviser and the Secretary of Defense, were nearly to Hawaii when the first Capellaviridae stories began to break. The Communications Director was on board, but it was one of his aides—with no knowledge whatsoever of the crisis—who first spotted the stories as she perused the first headlines of the day. The early stories seemed so bizarre that she ignored them, but within minutes credible news organizations were reporting more details. She woke the Communications Director, who immediately woke the Chief of Staff, who woke the President. This cascade of “who woke whom” would have been amusing under different circumstances.

Immediately after waking the President, the Chief of Staff sent orders to turn the plane around, hoping to get back to the mainland before the story spiraled into national chaos. She, like all of us, had known in the back of her mind that this moment would come, though it was difficult to imagine a worse place for the President to be when the story broke than over the Pacific Ocean. The Captain notified the Chief of Staff that there was plenty of fuel to return to Los Angeles; with favorable winds and a higher airspeed, the plane could be on the ground in less than three hours. The Captain never asked why the President had to return urgently to the mainland. One has to appreciate the integrity of that chain of command. An order was given on behalf of the President and the Captain turned the plane around.

The President and his senior advisers—those on board with a knowledge of the crisis—gathered hastily in the Air Force One conference room. Others on the plane, all the junior staffers and the traveling press, were awakened as the hulking 797 banked sharply and began its 180-degree turn. Even the most junior reporter recognized that a U-turn on Air Force One was likely to be newsworthy. As the media folks picked up their devices to report what might be a mechanical failure, or perhaps a medical issue on board, they received frantic incoming messages from stateside editors and producers. The fact that Air Force One was now turning sharply back toward California was evidence, if somewhat circumstantial, that something potentially massive was afoot.

I called the Chief of Staff, still not aware of the breaking news. The call went straight to voice mail. I left a short message and then sent her a text acknowledging her text to me. As I waited for a reply, I scrolled through the headlines on my phone, immediately recognizing what had happened. A few seconds later, I received a return text from the Chief of Staff: “Give me a few minutes.” Those few minutes grew to ten, then twenty. I fidgeted on the couch, recognizing that the longer the story bounced around without some adult supervision from the White House, the less recognizable it would become. Eventually the Chief of Staff called on my secure phone. I answered immediately. “I’ve seen the news,” I said, trying to appear calm.

“We need to get a better scientific understanding of the virus out there,” the Chief of Staff said breathlessly. “We are working on a statement right now, but we are going to need you to do a press conference. We need a scientist to calm people down.”

“Of course,” I said.

“I’m going to have to call you back,” she said suddenly, and hung up. I sat on the couch waiting for another call. I turned on the television, flipping to CNN, where a somber anchor (no one recognizable in the studio at that hour) was sitting solo above a huge red image on the screen: “BIOTERROR STRIKE, POTENTIALLY NATIONWIDE.” I found it hard to watch; the story was completely inaccurate, and I, who could set the record straight, was sitting on the couch in my boxer shorts. I walked to the bathroom, balancing my secure phone on the sink so I could answer it if it rang while I was in the shower. The call finally came while I was shaving. (I distinctly remember putting the phone to my left ear to avoid the lather on the right side of my face.) “Get yourself to the White House,” the Chief of Staff instructed. “Someone will meet you there. We need to get you on camera for the morning programs.”

“Is there a car coming?” I asked.

“Take a taxi.” She hung up. I finished dressing as quickly as I could, slipping a tie in my jacket pocket to put on later. I walked briskly out of the house into a light rain, prompting me to wonder if I should go back to get an umbrella so I would not be soaked when I went on camera. I decided against it, but then realized I had also left my White House badge behind. I rushed back inside—thinking about the fact that I had not seen any cabs—and grabbed both the badge and an umbrella.

The streets were empty and dark, save for the streetlights reflecting off the damp pavement. I recalled a film professor in college who pointed out to us that cinematographers always hose down the pavement before filming their night scenes to give the shots a glistening effect. That thought lasted just a split second. I jogged half a block to Nineteenth Street, looking both ways. There were no headlights, let alone taxis. I stood there briefly, my mind now spinning with what I knew from basic statistics: if there were no cabs now, the chances of one coming along anytime soon were slim. I patted my breast pocket and realized that I had left my regular cell phone back on my coffee table. I had checked the WeGoNow app back in my apartment, but the closest car was twelve minutes away, which seemed like an eternity. I must have set the phone down after that. I considered waking up one of my neighbors, but I did not know many of them, and the ones I did know did not have a car. Or I could go back to my apartment to get my phone, but there was no reason to think a WeGoNow driver would be any closer. I had deleted my other ride-sharing app after it was reported that their algorithm used crime data, which effectively steered drivers away from low-income neighborhoods.

I saw headlights behind me—no taxi light, but maybe I should flag it down anyway. I stepped into the street, waving my hands. The car swerved away and accelerated. No one was going to pick up a stranger at four in the morning, not even a white guy in a suit (with a tie stuffed in my pocket).

I called the Chief of Staff, figuring that getting a White House car might be the only hope here. “What?” she answered sharply.

“I can’t get a car,” I said. “I’ve been on the street for—” She hung up, or we were cut off. I assumed it was the latter and that she was too busy for me to try calling back. My best bet at that point was a hotel. There was a Marriott about ten blocks away, not close, but what else was I going to do?

42.

ON BOARD AIR FORCE ONE, THE PRESIDENT WAS HUDDLED with his senior advisers. A television set mounted on the wall of the conference room was broadcasting the semi-apocalyptic headlines, all still with a terrorism theme. Some of the more familiar anchors had begun to appear on camera, no doubt roused from bed as I had been. By all accounts, the President was poised and calm. Perhaps that was the athlete in him, exercising an ability to screen out distractions in the midst of a situation that one participant described as “trying to play chess at night in a sandstorm.”[8] The President and Chief of Staff, in consultation with others around the table, had agreed on four key priorities: (1) refute the terrorist story; (2) correct public misunderstanding of the virus (my job); (3) get the President on air to reassure the nation; (4) reach out to our Asian allies to reassure them (perhaps falsely) that we remained “steadfastly committed” to the South China Sea Agreement. It was a laudable strategy given the unfolding chaos, but, as the Communications Director told the Chief of Staff, “When your top two priorities involve the words ‘refuting’ and ‘correcting,’ you’re pretty much fucked.”

A new face appeared on one of the cable channels, the first “outside authority” to go on camera after the story broke. The Communications Director unmuted the sound so the room could hear “Retired Virus Expert” Dr. Vikram Banerjee: “The terrorists have most likely introduced a virulent virus, such as MERS—”

“That would be Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome,” the host offered.

“That’s correct,” Banerjee said confidently. “It’s a potent virus because it is airborne and can spread quickly via almost any kind of human contact.”

“What would you advise for Americans right now?” the host asked, his hand perched under his chin in a way that suggested grave concern.

“The key is to stay away from other people or any other place where the virus might spread,” Banerjee advised.

The Communications Director let out something between a growl and a shriek, muting the sound once again. “Where did they find this douchebag?” he asked to no one in particular.

“We need to get on air,” the Chief of Staff said. “We have to get the real story out.”

“I’ve got the President booked on all the morning shows,” the Communications Director said. “We can do it using the video uplink on the plane.”

The President interjected, “No, it should be an address. I don’t want to be answering questions. I want to make a clear, uninterrupted statement about what is happening—and what is not happening.”

“You’re going to have to answer questions,” the Communications Director said.

At that point, a junior staffer walked into the conference room and handed two sheets of paper to the Communications Director. “Oh, Christ,” the Communications Director said as he read.

“What?” the President asked.

“The Speaker just issued a statement,” the Communications Director answered. He began reading aloud as his eyes raced down the page. “ ‘The House of Representatives and I stand ready to provide leadership… blah, blah.’ Oh, my God: ‘Now is a time for us to reach out to our allies—’”

The National Security Adviser said, “She’s making the China play.”

“Of course she is,” the Chief of Staff said. “She’s going to deliver the China Dormigen.”

“Did she at least say it’s not a terrorist attack?” the President asked.

“Second-to-last paragraph,” the Communications Director said as he continued reading. “ ‘I want to emphasize that at this point we have no evidence of a terrorist attack.’”

The Chief of Staff exclaimed, “That’s it? No evidence of a terror attack? How about, we know for certain—”

The Communications Director cut her off, “It gets worse. Last graph: ‘After we have confronted this crisis, I will personally lead an investigation into how America allowed its Dormigen stocks to become so disastrously low. I am especially troubled by the privatization of our Dormigen production.’”

The President said loudly, “Why does she have a statement out before we do?” The room was silent. “Put out a fucking statement! We are already twenty feet underwater on this.”

“We are going to have a comprehensive statement out in the next ten minutes,” the Chief of Staff assured him.

“We don’t need a dissertation,” the President snapped. “We just need to get some facts out there so we don’t leave a vacuum for all this crap.”

In the brief silence that followed, the Communications Director’s phone chirped lightly. He looked at the screen, read for a moment, and then hurled the phone across the room at the opposite wall. It splintered into several pieces, one of which bounced back onto the conference table, settling in front of the Secretary of Defense. As the others in the room stared at the shattered cell phone, the Communications Director said, “The satellite uplink isn’t working. We can’t send video from the plane.”

“Can we fix it?” the Chief of Staff asked.

“I don’t know,” the Communications Director answered.

The President said, “I need to be on television. I need to address the country.”

“We can do radio,” the Chief of Staff offered.

“I’m not fucking FDR,” the President snapped.

“The safest option is to get you on the ground in Hawaii,” the Communications Director offered. “That would be about an hour shorter.”

“Or we could fix the uplink,” the Chief of Staff said.

“Who?” the President challenged. “Who on this plane knows how to fix a satellite uplink?”

“Then we need to go to Hawaii,” the Chief of Staff said. “Right? That gets us on the ground an hour earlier.” The President nodded assent. For the second time in half an hour, Air Force One made an aggressive 180-degree turn. And for the second time, the Captain did not ask why. In the back of the plane, the press corps did wonder why the plane was once again making a U-turn. Unfortunately—and arguably unfairly—the metaphor for the White House response was born: Air Force One flying in circles over the Pacific.

43.

TWO BLOCKS BEFORE THE MARRIOTT, WHEN I COULD SEE THE bright lights illuminating the circular driveway in front of the hotel, I looked back over my shoulder and spotted headlights coming toward me. I could see the bright taxi light as the car drew closer. I stepped aggressively into the street to hail the cab. By this point I was damp from the mist, not soaked, but also sweating despite the cool early morning. I reached for the back door of the taxi and pulled the handle; it was locked. I instinctively looked to the driver’s window, which buzzed down about halfway. The driver was an enormous black man with short salt-and-pepper hair. He stared out the window, locking eyes with me but not saying anything. I had never hailed a cab in D.C. at four-thirty in the morning. I suppose it makes sense that a sensible driver does not let just anyone jump in the back. “I need to go to the White House,” I said. The driver cocked his head slightly, still saying nothing. “It’s really important,” I added.

“Have you been drinking?” he asked without irony. I presume he could tell from looking at me that I was not going to stick a gun in the back of his head, but it was entirely plausible that I had been drinking all night and might vomit in the back of his cab. I fished into my pocket and pulled out my White House badge. I held it up in front of the window.

“It’s important,” I repeated.

“Okay, get in.” I heard the locks pop.

The cab dropped me at the northwest gate, where I usually entered, but I did not recognize the guard. Nor did I recognize the woman sitting in the lighted booth behind him. I flashed my visitor badge. “Who are you here to see?” the guard asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“Your name is not in the visitors log,” he said.

“It’s an emergency.”

“Someone still has to sign you in.”

“Okay, hold on.” I dialed the Chief of Staff, but there was no answer. I texted her: “Someone has to sign me in to the White House.” The rain began to fall a little harder, and I moved under the eaves of the guardhouse. I dialed the Communications Director, unaware that his phone was strewn in pieces around the conference room of Air Force One. No answer. I turned back to the guard. “Who’s inside already?” I asked. “Who can sign me in?”

“I can’t tell you that.” His tone suggested I should know as much, and he grew more suspicious just for the asking. My secure phone buzzed; caller ID showed it was the Chief of Staff. “I’m at the White House but I can’t get in,” I said.

“There has been a change of plans,” she explained. “We don’t want you to look political. You’re supposed to be the voice of science. We want to put you on camera somewhere else—not the White House.”

“My cab just left. I’m standing outside in the rain.”

“You’ll need a car.”

“Where am I going?”

“We don’t know yet. Does the NIH have TV facilities?” the Chief of Staff asked.

“Maybe, but there won’t be anyone there to run the equipment,” I said.

“Just stay there,” she said, hanging up. No one said hello or goodbye that day. After about five minutes a young woman in blue jeans and a sweatshirt came walking briskly down the path from the West Wing, two pieces of paper flapping in her hand. She opened the gate from the inside and thrust the papers toward me. “We just issued this release,” she said. I looked at her quizzically. She continued, “I’m the Assistant to the Deputy Communications Director. We listed you as the scientific contact on the release. Reporters are going to start calling, so you need to think about what you are going to say.”

I held up my secure phone. “On this number?”

“No, on your cell phone.”

“I left my cell phone at home,” I said.

“Fuck.” She exhaled audibly. I began to read the release. The first paragraph explained that the Capellaviridae virus was a common virus that had recently proven dangerous to humans. The statement declared in bold letters: “There has been no terrorist attack. Capellaviridae is a common virus found in nearly all American households.”

The second paragraph explained that the White House was going to “extraordinary measures” to procure sufficient doses of Dormigen to deal with the virus threat. Near the bottom of the page, the release explained that Capellaviridae was “spread by the bite of a common dust mite found in most—” I stopped reading. “We can’t say ‘spread.’ You’ve got to redo this.”

“It’s gone out,” she said, mildly annoyed, as if I did not appreciate the magnitude of what was going on. “I was told to get something out immediately.”

“We can’t say ‘spread,’” I repeated. “We cannot have people thinking that they’re going to catch this thing. It’s not contagious… You’re either going to get it, or you’re not. We can’t—”

“I can do an update. What am I supposed to say?” she asked.

“I don’t have my phone, so you need to change the contact number anyway.”

“Fine. Tell me what to write.”

“Just say…” I was thinking as I spoke, but not fast enough. “Say it’s not contagious,” I instructed. “Leave the dust mite out. Just tell people… say it’s not contagious. Say that nearly all Americans are infected by—no, don’t say ‘infected.’ Say that many Americans are hosts to Capellaviridae, and in the vast majority of cases, the virus is benign.” She was just staring at me. “Write this down,” I said sharply. Neither she nor I had a pen. As I patted my jacket pockets, the guard, who had been standing near us the whole time, offered a ballpoint. I continued, “Say that we are—that scientists, the nation’s top scientists, are working around the clock to determine why Capellaviridae turns virulent—”

“No one knows what virulent means.”

“Fine, say ‘dangerous.’”

She offered her phone to me. “Take this,” she said. “We’ll use my number as the contact number on the updated release.” Just as she handed me her phone, my secure phone beeped with a text from the Chief of Staff: Get to the CNN studio. The Communications Assistant read the text at the same time I did. As I stood there paralyzed, she grabbed her phone back from me. “I’ll get you a car,” she said.

44.

ON BOARD AIR FORCE ONE, THE PRESIDENT AND SENIOR staff monitored the news after the release of the White House statement. News directors all over the world had been waiting for any information from the White House, so they rushed out the first thing to come over the wire. The revised statement, issued after my exchange with the Communications Assistant, was ignored. Almost no one noticed the absence of the word “spread” in the second release, and once we had mentioned the dust mite, there was no way of unringing that bell. Sure enough, CNN broadcast a huge graphic of the North American dust mite, just like the one Tie Guy had been so enamored of days earlier. Prime-time anchor Linda Schuham was alone on camera, presumably having been roused from bed and rushed through makeup. (When I appeared on camera forty-five minutes later, I would not look so put-together.) The electronic banner below the anchor desk read, “Bioterror Attack?”

“At least now we have a question mark,” the Strategist commented sardonically. The Communications Director was calling news outlets, one after another, demanding that they remove any reference to terrorism. His smashed phone—which had been cleaned up, but for the occasional piece that turned up on the carpeted floor—was turning out to be a huge problem. That phone had all his contact numbers; worse, it was the number recognized by the people who needed to be answering his calls. Now he was fighting his way through layers of gatekeepers with each call, screaming things like, “I’m standing next to the President, you fucking peon! Put me on with your producer now or you will never work in the news business again!”[9]

Fox was now running a banner at the bottom of the screen: “White House denies terror attack.” In focusing on the terror angle, however, we had made no progress in disabusing the nation of the belief that Capellaviridae was spreading. By six a.m. on the East Coast, over two thousand school districts had canceled classes. Universities were telling students to stay in their dorm rooms and avoid common areas—even as students rushed to common areas to watch the news warning them to stay out of common areas.[10] Americans in the Midwest woke up to reports that most schools and workplaces in the East were closed, further embedding the notion that some kind of plague was sweeping across the nation. Fox News cut to a “Contagious Disease Expert” via satellite, a well-coiffed woman sitting at a desk in an academic office. She explained to viewers, “The dust mite bites an infected person and then bites someone else, thereby passing along the deadly virus.” The Strategist, holding the remote control, was shaking his head no as he listened.

“What advice would you offer?” the anchor asked earnestly.

“Obviously you stay away from other people, since we don’t know who is already infected.”

“And what about the dust mites?”

“Vacuum anyplace they might be found. Wash all sheets and towels in hot water and bleach.”

“Would it be better to burn them?” the anchor asked.

“That’s a good option, if you can do it safely,” the expert advised.

The President roared,[11] “Where’s our guy? Why are we not on-screen?”

The Communications Director looked at his watch and answered, “He’ll be up on CNN in about four minutes.”

The Chief of Staff said, “Mr. President, we are going to be in Hawaii in an hour. We have broadcast facilities set up at the air base. We need to start drafting your remarks.”

“I want to see this,” the President said, looking at the television.

The Strategist changed the channel to CNN, where the anchor was talking to a terrorism expert, and then changed it again, this time to MSNBC, which was showing aerial footage of a massive backup on the George Washington Bridge as drivers rushed to leave New York City. “Where do they think they’re going?” the Strategist asked no one in particular. Of course, we now know the answer. Many of these drivers would show up at campgrounds in Vermont and Maine—not willing to risk a motel—where they set up tents or slept in their cars, often completely unprepared for the cold. A young couple from New Jersey wandered into the woods north of Bangor, where there was still snow on the ground, and died of exposure hours later. Hikers found their bodies in June. This urge to drive somewhere was one of the stranger aspects of the Outbreak. An urge to move. To do something. And then there were the gun deaths. A high proportion of Americans believed that repelling Capellaviridae was somehow like fighting zombies. More than three hundred people died from gun accidents in the three days after the Capellaviridae news broke. How exactly was one supposed to fight a lurking virus with a shotgun? People tried, apparently. There were also tragic homicides as paranoid individuals shot neighbors who had come to check in or offer help. Another fifty or so people died in house fires after they tried to burn “contaminated” sheets and towels indoors, sometimes in the bathtub.

Last year Princeton University convened an interdisciplinary conference on the Outbreak: public health officials, virologists, national security experts, and so on. I spoke on some panels, but I also sat in on sessions with scholars who had examined the crisis through a different lens. A psychology professor from the University of Illinois[12] spoke about the unique nature of the Outbreak, namely that all Americans perceived themselves at risk, but none, save our political leaders, were in a position to act. One passage from her paper (which she summarized at the conference) has stuck with me, as it helps to make sense of the country’s utter craziness in those first hours:

Of course, many people did act, just not in ways that made the situation any better. One reality we overlooked before the crisis went public is that the bulk of the nation’s Dormigen supply was unsecured. It was a drug with no recreational value, like aspirin or antibiotic lotion. In most hospitals, the Dormigen was in places easily accessible by all: in the examining rooms, at the nurses’ station, in hallway cabinets, and so on. In the immediate hours after the Outbreak became public, doctors and nurses and pharmaceutical reps and warehouse attendants and anyone else with access to the drug realized that they were potentially in possession of a lifesaving resource that would soon disappear. We had done nothing to secure the supply. A truck driver in Virginia was rolling along I-95 when he heard the first reports of the Outbreak on the radio. He had left a hospital supply warehouse in Georgia two days earlier. On a hunch, he pulled off the highway and parked his eighteen-wheeler in the far corner of a truck stop. He slid open the back door, revealing ninety-seven cases of Dormigen—a cargo that was now more valuable than heroin. The truck later turned up empty in Pennsylvania. The Dormigen, like so much of the supply, was gone—sold on one of the black markets that popped up everywhere. The Outbreak Inquiry Commission subsequently calculated that roughly 17 percent of the nation’s Dormigen supply was purloined in the twelve hours after the crisis became public.

45.

I ARRIVED AT THE CNN STUDIO JUST AFTER SUNRISE. THE morning sun was reflecting sharply off the shiny exterior of the building as the black sedan dropped me at the entrance. News of the Outbreak was palpable. The street was mostly deserted. Many of the stores and shops had handwritten signs on the door saying they would not be opening DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCES or UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. Later, when we had made some headway convincing the public that Capellaviridae does not “spread,” stores and shops began to open as an act of solidarity and strength. Starbucks was the first company to issue a statement saying that all of its stores would be open, as “this is a time for Americans to come together, not to rush away from one another in fear.” It was an important step in our efforts to stem the panic. Still, some 40 percent of Starbucks employees called in sick in those first few days.

The CNN building was abuzz with activity, in striking contrast to the eerie, semi-deserted street outside. A producer was waiting for me in the lobby. She, like most of the other people scurrying across the lobby, was wearing a white face mask. “I know you’ll understand if I don’t shake your hand,” she said.

I laughed involuntarily, causing her to take a half step back. “It’s not even the right wrong response,” I said.

“What do you mean?” she asked, perhaps offended but also deferring to me as “the expert.”

I explained, “Most of us are already carrying Capellaviridae, so there is no point in trying to protect ourselves from the virus. But even if for some strange reason you were not infected, the virus is transmitted by a biting insect, so there is no point in wearing a face mask. See? It’s the wrong wrong response.”

“Say that on camera,” she said. “That’s perfect. We need to get you into makeup.” She used a badge to swipe me through security and pushed me gently toward a bank of elevators. An elevator door opened and we stepped inside. Two other people joined us, both wearing face masks. They spread out to the corners of the elevator, keeping us all as far apart as possible. “Eleven. This is us,” the producer said. “Have you ever been on television?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Just have a conversation. You’ll do great.”

Makeup was a small, harshly lit room with several barber-type chairs. “He’s yours,” the producer said, handing me off to a very large man in a tight white T-shirt sipping coffee. “I need him back in five.”

“Five?” the makeup attendant exclaimed with mock indignation. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.” As if to put a finer point on it, he turned to me and said, “Get in the chair, you’re a mess.” My suit was wet, as was my hair. My face was damp with perspiration. “Where to begin?” he asked. I pulled the tie out of my pocket; it was creased at two-inch intervals from having been wadded up for hours.

“Should I put this on?” I asked.

“No! No, that is not going to work,” he said, taking the wrinkled tie from my hand and literally tossing it aside. “You’ll be fine without it. But we need to get that jacket dry or it’s going to reflect on camera.” He used a blow dryer on both my jacket and my hair. Then, with striking efficiency, he applied makeup to the shiny places on my face and combed my hair, spraying it with something to hold it in place. The producer appeared in the doorway holding a clipboard and looking slightly anxious.

“Okay, I need him,” she said. The producer steered me around a corner into a large studio with banks of desks arrayed across the open floor. At the far end of the room, I could see the familiar CNN news desk illuminated by bright lights. The room was a hive of activity, with reporters and producers scurrying back and forth off camera. The familiar Linda Schuham was sitting at the anchor desk, interviewing someone whom I did not recognize. There was a large map of the United States illuminated behind the anchor desk; both Schuham and her guest pointed at the map on occasion. An older man with a long gray ponytail stepped beside me and said in a raspy voice, “I’m going to mike you up.” I could smell tobacco on his breath as he clipped a microphone on my lapel, wrapped the extra cord around a small transmitter, and then slid it inside my jacket pocket. “You don’t need to do anything,” he said. “I’ll turn it on from here. Just remember to give it back to me when you’re done.” The White House had been emphatic about the three points I needed to make: (1) no terrorist attack; (2) the virus does not spread; (3) we have the capacity to keep the country healthy. The last point was clearly debatable, but panic was not going to do anyone any good. I would do my best to make the situation feel under control as Americans woke up to the Capellaviridae news.

The Communications Director had given me a pep talk as I rode to the studio in the sedan. “Stick to the talking points,” he said. “Do you know what that means?”

“I want to make sure I get those points across,” I answered.

“No. That means you are not going to say anything else. Those three points, over and over. That’s it. If Linda Schuham asks you what your favorite color is, you say, ‘What’s important to understand right now is that there has not been a terrorist attack.’ Got it?”

It seemed easy enough until I found myself gazing across the room at the news desk, with cameras surrounding it from all angles. The producer said, “We’re going to break in thirty seconds and then I’ll take you up there.” I did one more mental checklist of the points I needed to make. The producer must have seen the concentration on my face, because she said, “Don’t overthink it. It’s just a conversation. You’re going to have about three minutes.”

“Three minutes?” I asked, incredulous. It had never dawned on me that I would have so little time.

“That’s actually long for a news segment at this hour,” she said. “Remember, follow Linda’s lead and have a conversation.”

Of course, that was the opposite of what the Communications Director had advised me, I thought, recalling his final admonition: “I don’t care what the fuck she asks you. Don’t even listen to the question. When her lips stop moving, you give the answer you want to give.” The program went to break. The guest stood up to leave, a different producer escorting him off the set as I was steered into the bright lights. A young woman rushed up to Linda Schuham, handing her a bottle of water while conferring about something. The producer guided me to my seat on the set. I felt awkward and stiff compared to what seemed like the fluidity and ease of everyone around me. The lights were bizarrely bright, giving everything on the set a fake plastic feel. Linda Schuham shared a laugh with the woman who had brought her the water and then turned to me and said in a surprisingly chipper voice, “Thanks so much for coming on. Just explain to me what’s happening like you were talking to your mother.”

“We’ll just have a conversation,” I offered.

“Exactly,” she said.

From somewhere behind the bright lights beating down on me, I heard, “We’re on in five-four-three-two, and live.”

46.

THE PRESIDENT AND HIS SENIOR ADVISERS WATCHED ON THE television in the conference room on Air Force One. Linda Schuham looked somberly into the camera and delivered her introduction: “Many of you are waking up to the news that America is suffering a potentially devastating public health crisis: a previously benign virus, widespread in America, has turned deadly. This is happening at a time when America’s supply of Dormigen, the one drug that can be used to treat this virus successfully, is in short supply. Our guest is one of America’s top scientists and an adviser to the White House.” She turned to me and said, “Welcome to the program. Why are we just learning about this now?”

“That’s a good question, Linda,” I said, trying to buy myself time. It really was a good question. As the chaos had unfolded that morning, I found myself wondering if our secrecy had done more harm than good.

On Air Force One, the Communications Director yelled at the television, “No. No, that is not a good question. Do not answer that question.”

It felt awkward, almost rude, but I went with the talking points. “The most important thing to realize is that there has been no terrorist attack—”

She cut me off: “The White House put out a statement to that effect. If that’s true—”

“It is true,” I said firmly.

On Air Force One, the Communications Director continued his commentary: “Okay, good, good.”

Unfortunately for me, Linda Schuham had faced more than a few guests who showed up with talking points in their pockets. “Back to my original question,” she pressed. “How long has the White House known about this virus, and also about the looming Dormigen shortage?”

The Communications Director pleaded with the television, “Do not go down that rabbit hole.”

I answered, “The most important thing right now is to manage the public health situation. What people need to realize is that the Capellaviridae virus is extremely common. Many of us are already carrying it. Only in some small fraction of cases will it become dangerous.”

The President, watching with the others, said, “That’s good.”

“Nice pivot,” the Communications Director added.

Linda Schuham took the conversation in my direction. “So I might have the virus right now? Or you might have it?” she asked.

“Yes, we’re probably both carrying Capellaviridae,” I said.

“Might the virus be spreading through our studio as we speak?” she asked in mock alarm.

“No. Absolutely not,” I answered. “That’s the wrong way to think about Capellaviridae. The virus is already out there. You and I have probably been carrying it around for twenty or thirty years, maybe since we were born. The danger here is more like cancer than the flu.”

On Air Force One, the Strategist asked loudly, “Did he just say ‘cancer’?”

“Fuck me,” the Communications Director said.

Linda Schuham asked, “Cancer? Is that supposed to make people feel better?”

I tried to climb out of the hole. “What I mean is…” No one heard the rest of the answer, during which I tried to explain how lurking viruses work, without actually understanding how lurking viruses work.

Linda Schuham threw me a lifeline. She asked, “When Capellaviridae turns dangerous, Dormigen is effective, yes?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“And yet the nation is running out of Dormigen. How did that happen? How many people might die as a result?”

She put talking point number three on a tee for me. I explained, “The White House and all federal agencies are working around the clock to bolster the nation’s Dormigen supply. Our allies have shipped us millions of doses. We are working on alternative ways to treat the virulent form of Capellaviridae. We are managing this public health challenge.”

On Air Force One, the Chief of Staff said, “That’s a strong finish.”

The Strategist replied, “But you can’t mention the c-word. That’s going to be the headline: an epidemic of cancer, spreading.”

“Cancer doesn’t spread from person to person,” the Chief of Staff said. “That’s why he made the comparison.”

“No one’s going to understand that,” the Communications Director complained, shaking his head in frustration.

“At least we’re beating back the terrorist story,” the President offered.

In fact, the terrorist story was alive and well. We had not yet even seen the worst of it. In a nondescript suburb of Houston, Tony Perez was just finishing his work for the day. He had been up early, about four-thirty Central Time, digesting the news of the day and then, as he would tell the Outbreak Inquiry Commission, “Putting a different spin on it.” In fact, Perez was the reigning king of fake news: creative, compelling, prolific, and shockingly well read. In a burst of imagination that morning, Perez had reported that a Latino separatist group had introduced Capellaviridae to the United States and would provide an antidote only if Congress agreed to their demands.

47.

I WALKED OUT OF THE CNN STUDIO INTO THE BRIGHT MORNING sunlight, not sure what to do next. The rain had cleared and the day was pleasant in an early spring kind of way. There was no car waiting for me. I heard nothing from the Communications Director after my segment. Maybe that was because he was displeased with me; more likely it was because there was so much else going on. I knew I should not have used the cancer analogy. I felt that even as I was saying the words. My impression had been reinforced by Linda Schuham’s reaction as I made the comparison. I saw a glimmer of surprise in her eyes—recognition that she had knocked me off my talking points and unearthed something newsworthy in our conversation. That is what CNN paid her a lot of money to do.

I sat on a bench across from the CNN building, taking in the surreal scene around me: harried, concerned people walking purposefully on a beautiful spring day. Now what? I looked at the cell phone the Communications Assistant had given me. There were 151 voice messages—so many that it seemed pointless to return any of them. Tie Guy had left me a text on my secure phone: “Call me ASAP.” I had not spoken to him since the news broke. I figured he wanted to hear firsthand what was happening, or maybe he wanted to critique my CNN performance. (No one appreciates how difficult it is to stay on message in a very short conversation with a host who is working hard to steer the discussion somewhere else.) Or he might be angry, given that I had been less than forthright with him. In any event, I was not eager to have any of these conversations, so I did not call him back. Instead, I sat on that bench in the sunshine, watching people in face masks scurry by while I waited for someone to tell me what to do next.

Tie Guy sent me a second text on the secure phone: “Call me ASAP. It’s important re: Capellaviridae.” This time I decided to call him back, but as I was searching for his number in my contacts, the Communications Director called. I answered immediately: “Hey, I’m sorry about the cancer comparison—”

“It’s over,” he said quickly. “Don’t do it again. The President is speaking in about thirty-five minutes. Get someplace where you can watch the speech. You’re going to do a satellite radio tour—all the drive-time shows. They’ll give you the details when you get there. Stick to the talking points,” he said, hanging up before I could answer. I had no idea what he was talking about, but he texted me an address for a studio about fifteen blocks away. I would be able to watch the President’s speech there, but I would have to hustle to get there in time. There were far fewer cabs on the street than usual; the safest option was a brisk walk. I should have called Tie Guy back as I was walking, but my mind was already on the President’s speech and the radio interviews I would have to do immediately after he finished.

48.

LIKE ALL SUCCESSFUL WRITERS, TONY PEREZ STUCK TO A DISCIPLINED schedule. He awoke early, both because his writing was sharpest in the morning and because his stories did best when they appeared early. Many of us had developed the habit of perusing the headlines on our devices when we woke up in the morning, or after settling in at the office with a hot cup of coffee. Perez was not just a gifted writer of fake news; he was also a sophisticated consumer of data. He spent his afternoons studying the metrics for his masterpieces: who read them, who shared them, what stories did best with different kinds of readers, and so on. Real news outlets do not have the luxury of changing the news to suit the tastes of their readers. New York Times readers would no doubt prefer sunny weather and a balanced federal budget, but if those things are not really happening, the editors have no choice but to report the less pleasant stuff. Tony Perez, on the other hand, woke up every morning to a blank canvas. What would most fascinate or captivate a housewife in Atlanta or a bored software executive riding a bus to work in Silicon Valley? Perez drew laughter during his testimony before Congress when he described himself as “an artist,” but he was not necessarily wrong. He was clearly a creative writer.[13] Not that I have anything but contempt for him and his ilk: if I had seen him walking on the road the morning he wrote his first Capellaviridae story, I would have run him over with my car (if I owned a car). But even I have to concede that he was very good at what he did. Advertisers loved him; at the time the Capellaviridae story broke, Perez was earning over $700,000 a year from online advertising—not bad for an unemployed PE teacher who had been living in his parents’ attic just two years earlier.

Perez had seen that first Capellaviridae story posted by The New Yorker, as well as the early follow-ups generated by the consortium of news outlets reporting on the story. Those pieces were scary and incomplete. For Perez, this was a gift, as it allowed him to fill in the details. He knew from experience that his best stories, like successful Hollywood movies, needed a villain. He also knew that his readers hated politics, but they lapped up political conspiracies. As Perez sat at his kitchen table in sweatpants and a T-shirt, he immediately recognized Capellaviridae as an opportunity to weave together a scary pathogen with political intrigue. “I write fiction that feels like news,” Perez told the Outbreak Inquiry Commission. “It has to be nested in reality.” Perez was lambasted for portraying himself as some kind of cross between Edward R. Murrow and Picasso, but his testimony was fascinating. His genius, if I dare use that word, lay in taking events people knew to be true, introducing layers of fabricated but intriguing detail, and producing a compulsively readable story that felt accurate to his most loyal readers. As he would later testify, “Nobody really knew what was going on. I offered one possibility.”

His “possibility” was this: An Arizona-based Latino separatist group had genetically engineered the virulent strain of Capellaviridae. He could explain to his readers what we scientists were unable to explain—why an innocuous virus suddenly became deadly. This separatist group, the so-called Latino Liberation League (LLL),[14] had also engineered an effective antidote for the virus. According to Perez’s initial story, the LLL was offering the antidote to the President and Congress in exchange for the creation of an independent, Spanish-speaking nation to be carved out of parts of New Mexico, Arizona, and West Texas. Perez’s story had two graphics: a map showing the proposed borders of the new independent nation, Estado Latino Nuevo, as well as a larger map of the United States with eleven red dots indicating where the virus had been deliberately introduced.

For all the fiction embedded in the story, there was one pillar of truth sufficiently strong to keep the story alive: There had been talk in previous years, mostly among fringe groups on the far right and far left, about a Latino independence movement. One Arizona community, some little town with 350 residents, had voted to make Spanish its official language. Never mind that no one had ever articulated what an “official language” really means at the town level; this quirky development was enough to inflame the imaginations of both right-wingers (who feared the country was being hijacked by Mexicans) and left-wingers (who were advocating for more explicit political rights for the nation’s Hispanic population). When Perez tossed Capellaviridae into this political maelstrom—a fake news grenade—he hit the readership jackpot. For the President, who was preparing to address the nation from a military base in Honolulu, it meant that a shockingly high proportion of Americans believed the country was under bio-attack from a domestic terrorist group.

The President was scheduled to address the nation at noon Eastern Time, six a.m. in Hawaii. He and his principal advisers were not the only political leaders for whom the crisis was top of mind. In China, Premier Xing had been huddled with his senior staff since the Capellaviridae story broke. It is not hard to infer what they were discussing: What ought to be the price for the Dormigen that America was now desperate for? And when exactly should that offer be made?