Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome Read Online Free PDF Page A

give a crap about the budget either. Nor did anyone else—there wasn’t a Congressperson on the Hill who didn’t have family or friends who were sick. This plague hit everyone.
    Phyllida Yang, Professor of Pathology, New York University:
    Haden’s syndrome really was a universal disease, and that’s something that’s more unusual than you might think. Part of this was that the initial vectors of infection were mobile, relatively high-status individuals: those epidemiologists who traveled across continents and came home to hospitals and universities, infecting as they went. The infection traveled as easily upward, in terms of social and economic classes, as it traveled downward. It wasn’t an outbreak focused on one particular group, as, for example, AIDS was initially in the US, when it first spread among urban gay men, or as modern day outbreaks of communicable diseases are among upper-middle-class children whose parents refuse to have them vaccinated. It went far and wide.
    One consequence of this was that when it struck, there was a considerable knock-on effect because it was so widespread. Medical resources were overwhelmed, of course, but that was only the most obvious effect. Businesses came to a standstill not just because people called in sick but because spouses and parents stayed home to tend to the afflicted. Enough truckers got sick that perishable goods went bad waiting for someone to deliver them. Nearly every corner of American life was touched—and usually brought to a halt—by the initial outbreak of the disease. And as bad as it was here it was often worse in other countries, many of which did not have the infrastructure the US had built up over the years.
    The one silver lining, if you want to call it that, of this universality of illness was that because everyone was either sick or knew intimately someone who was sick, there was immense political will for both short and long term solutions to the problems Haden’s presented. And in terms of political impetus to find solutions, no one was more motivated than the President himself.
    Wesley Auchincloss:
    After three weeks it was clear that Margie wasn’t coming out of it. Doctors elsewhere were reporting other patients by the thousands with the same issues she had, so we knew that what was happening to her wasn’t isolated or unusual. And it wasn’t something we could keep hidden from the press or the American people, either. It was around this time that the term “Haden’s syndrome” started to be used in reference to the disease, particularly the third stage of it. We tried to keep that from the President as long as we could, but that was a futile gesture. He heard it.
    Dr. Harvey and her staff confirmed by MRIs and other tests that Margie was awake and conscious, so the President spent much of his time with her at Walter Reed, talking to her and reading those mystery novels she had as her guilty pleasure. Kenny Lamb finally had to pull him aside and tell him that despite his personal pain, the country needed a President, and that President needed to be seen leading and reassuring the country in this moment of crisis. When Kenny said this, the President gave him a look that, if I had to guess, communicated supreme apathy about the needs of the rest of the country. But after a minute he nodded slowly and told Kenny that the next morning he’d be ready to resume full activity as President.
    Col. Lydia Harvey:
    I remember that the President stayed up with the First Lady that entire night. I suggested to him that both he and the First Lady needed their rest, but he said, more politely than I suspect he really wished to, that he was the President and that no one could stop him from speaking to his wife. I told the medical staff to give him and the First Lady privacy and to intrude only if absolutely necessary.
    Nevertheless around midnight I came into the room just before heading home myself. The President was sitting on his wife’s bed, facing