How did Lawrence Wright foresee the bleak scenario when so many at the highest levels of the U.S. government didn’t predict the coronavirus? “I listened,” he told the Yahoo News podcast “Skullduggery.”
WASHINGTON — A virus emanating from Asia sweeps through the world and infects millions. Panic spreads through American cities as business shut down, hospitals are flooded and authorities scramble to find ventilators and other badly needed supplies. The country’s social order seems on the verge of collapse as conspiracy theories fueled by Russian bots flourish.
How did Wright foresee the bleak scenario when so many at the highest levels of the U.S. government didn’t? He said he considered a few options, including nuclear war, before settling on a script about a deadly pandemic. As a young reporter in Atlanta, Wright had covered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and found himself mesmerized by the scientists there who were then trying to control a 1976 swine flu outbreak and, subsequently, Legionnaires’ disease.
The main character in “The End of October” is a CDC virologist and epidemiologist who is dispatched to investigate a mysterious outbreak in Indonesia. The scientist is exposed to the virus and forced to quarantine but soon learns that the pandemic has spread out from Mecca as millions of Islamic pilgrims return home as part of the annual hajj.
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