Let's Call it A Scientist's Confession

If you've never come into contact with the Yulon Virus, consider yourself quite lucky. 

If you've never known anyone who has suffered from the Yulon Virus, consider yourself quite lucky. 

If you've never heard of the Yulon Virus, consider yourself quite lucky.

A few years back, this country had a rapid outbreak of the Yulon Virus. The papers were calling it the crisis of the century.

It was never understood just how this virus was transmitted. They had only ruled out sexual transmission based on the number of children who had died. Still, I say, you never know.

What we understood better was the speed. We knew that 47 patients died within the first week this virus had come to the country. We knew that they died within days, and that the population of affected people was growing exponentially. Within two weeks, 143 casualties had occurred. 

What we all understood best - what became embedded within us - was the symptoms. If the speed did not frighten you, if the number of casualties did not frighten you, if the newspapers labeling this the biggest crisis of the 21st century did not frighten you, then the symptoms would. 

Once contracted, the first few hours were virtually undetectable. A slight fever would occur, and sometimes there would be a discoloration of the skin, but nothing to suggest immediate medical attention. Within the day, however, the virus would spread quickly through your body and immediately get to work on your lungs. The white blood cells in the lungs would expand (picture a balloon being filled with helium) causing the inverse effect on the red blood cells. As the whites grew, the red blood cells shrunk, which would cause your lungs to shrink at a rapid pace, causing you to lose more and more oxygen each hour. They say death by suffocation is the worst way to die, but I say that death by prolonged suffocation is something completely different. Imagine a deep, satisfying breath. The kind of breath you take before meditation, you know, one of those deep 'in through your nose, hold - hold - hold, now out through your mouth' breaths. One hour later, imagine each breath feeling as if it were coming through a snorkel. Three hours later your breaths felt like they were coming through a straw. And then a coffee stirrer. All the while, less and less oxygen is reaching your brain, and the hallucinations begin. Not even the good kind. Soon enough, you're wishing that this virus would just kill you already, but you still have hours and hours until the oxygen level in your body drops to a fatal level.

And then, ultimately, you die. As quick as that. As slow as that.

There were images spread across every screen of people cutting open holes in their throat to try to receive more oxygen, but that would never work, and most of them just bled out. Many patients ended up taking matters into their own hands after receiving the news of their infection, assuming immediate death to be much better than the suffering they would endure. So, suicide rates soared. They didn't even tally up the amount of suicides caused by Yulon. The total number of casualties would be at least double if they had. 

It was as horrifying as it was brutally real. It was the Cuban Missile Crisis of the 21st century. It was the modern day Black Plague. It was our biggest fear.

But, horrifying as it was, there were hundreds of people working to find the cure. Scientists dreamed of this day. The way you might've dreamed of getting up to bat in the World Series, the game resting on your shoulders, and you hit the game winning home run - that's how scientists dreamed of this day. The vaccine that could save the lives of everyone in the country. It was the golden ticket. The key to immortality. The walk off home run of the science world.

So, nobody really questioned the fact that only two months after Patient 001, we had found a cure. No one found it shocking; I mean, think about it, it was each and every scientist in the country working together. Each brilliant mind sharing thoughts with someone even smarter than themselves. It made sense. 

And the nation, so desperate for a cure, quickly accepted this vaccine as the answer to our prayers. Soon enough, vaccination clinics were set up all over the country. Each hospital was filled with patients looking for their Yulon Shot. It took hours to even be seen in an Emergency Room anymore. 

Heart Attack? Wait in line, we've got vaccinations to give out first. 

Stroke? Take a seat, we'll be with you in a few hours.

Tumor? Ha, good luck with that one.

High Schools were having assemblies about the importance of getting your Yulon Shot. Hundreds of kids packed into their stuffy auditorium, listening to some angry old woman talk to them about the importance of the vaccine. Still, they thought, "anything to get out of class".They were even having nurses coming in each Wednesday for the first few weeks of school, and each teacher would lead their students to the gymnasium for their vaccination. No child would not be vaccinated.

Don't even think about attending a university without your vaccination. You couldn't travel without it either. The first question in your job interview was usually "Are you all up to date on your Yulon Vaccinations?"

I remember getting mine at an Urgent Care Center around the corner from my house. I sat in the waiting room for 45 minutes, counting the number of Scooby-Doo band-aids I saw walk by, covering up the spot of the needle puncture. I watched the little boxed-in television in the upper corner of the room. It was showing some videos of the middle-eastern country we were apparently going to war with, and a few reporters were debating the severity of the situation. It helped pass the time. Plus, I might as well educate myself, this was supposed to be our "next big crisis" now that Yulon was dying down. Disease and war, the two crises of my life.

Finally, I got the shot, and went on with life. Crisis averted. It hurt, but trust me it was better than Yulon.

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They never really tell you what's inside of a vaccine. They could be putting cow s**t in your body, but as long as your safe, you don't have to know. Then again, if they're putting cow s**t in your body, do you really want to know? 

But in case you were curious, there were some ingredients listed in the pamphlet they gave you in the waiting room. They were all real big science words - dephlomaxitocin, ephrocilin, vansidium, triterphaline. No one had any idea what they really were, but trust me they all sounded good. "Ahh, vansidium, I heard that really strengthens your blood cells". But, as long as we were safe, we didn't need to know.

But I'm not telling you this because of what I knew then. I wouldn't be writing this now, if what I thought I knew to be true was actually true. No, I'm telling you what I know now. And thanks to my brother's questionable ethical code, and some scientist who woke up in the middle of the night in cold sweat, I know what I know.

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A year back, my brother had just started practicing psychiatry. One of his earlier patients was a scientist suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. It was an interesting case, seeing as the guy had spent the past twenty years working in a lab and going home to a fully functional family. My brother ended up becoming very intrigued, more so than he ever had with his other patients. 

He brought much of his work home with him, so we'd spend some dinners together, and he would tell me all about this guy, this Dr. Steven Boland. Him, talking in psychiatric terms, me, listening with an ordinary man's perspective, we made a decent team. He would explain to me that his other PTSD patients were relatively all alike, all military men recovering from their time at war, the war that was now over. They all had stories of flashbacks and night tremors that related back to the war. But this scientist, we could never understand where his trauma derived from. You can't treat someone if you have no idea why they have this disorder, so it had become quite frustrating.

 

A little piece of insight: all these psychiatrists and psychologists and therapists, they all take these oaths that reassure you that your secrets are safe with them. But, I promise you, their friends and family know your whole life story.

One particular night, my brother sat me down. He was more distressed than usual, scared even. He was breathing deeply, and his hands were noticeably shaking as he bit his fingertips. And he told me that I could not repeat what I was about to hear. He took out his notes and he began to read from his yellow legal pad.

"I was assigned to be a part of a task that I didn't volunteer for, and that I never enjoyed. But I was offered a lot of money by our government, so I did it. All of us, some of the greatest scientists around, were put together to create a disease. Not a vaccine. A disease.

Listen to this - Ephrocilin and dephlomaxitocin weren't necessary to defeating Yulon. The two mix together to form a chemical combination called Serfiltrium. 

You know what Serotonin is? What am I saying, your a psychiatrist, I'm sure you do. If not, I suggest you stop prescribing medications until you do. Well, then think about the word Serfiltrium. Break it down. Serotonin filter. It drains the chemical from a person's body. You get it? I think you do.

The vaccine was already created, we just needed to make the disease for the vaccine to cure. It was the inverse of everything I had ever learned. But it wasn't hard. In fact, it's easier to make a disease than it is to cure it. Ironic, huh?

Well anyway, within about a year's time, we had found a disease that would strike paralyzing fear into anybody with a pulse. I mean, who isn't afraid of suffocation. We basically just took everyone's most feared way of dying, and we put it on steroids. 

What we were told everyday, was that the lives of a few would be sacrificed to save millions. The old 'to make an omelette, you've gotta break a few eggs' mantra. Well, we broke some eggs.

I can't believe I'm telling you this. It's awful to even think about."

Written in my brother's notes were pages upon pages of this same tale. Let's call it a scientist's confession.

Sitting there and listening with no prior medical knowledge, it was obvious that he'd really lost me on the whole Serfiltrium part. So, my brother broke it down for me. 

"Basically, Serotonin is what keeps you happy. People with anxiety and depression disorders, they take Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, because their Serotonin levels are too low. The lower it's levels are, the more anxious and depressed you become. It's much easier to succumb to fear when your Serotonin levels are low, because you chemically don't have enough power to fight it off."

The more he talked, the more simple it became. It all began to make sense. 

Those military men, they had PTSD because of the things they had done, and the things they had seen. The men they killed, and the men they saw die, that's what showed up in their nightmares. They woke up in cold sweat from a dream of a man begging them for mercy, and them shooting him in the chest. The same dream, every night. 

But Dr. Steven Boland, he killed more people than any of them. When he woke up in a cold sweat, he saw planes hovering over a city. He saw mushroom clouds and smoke. He saw the news channels reporting the death of over 42,310 ordinary citizens. 

After the Yulon Virus crisis had passed, our new crisis was war.

I thought back to the day I got my shot, and I remember that all that was playing that day, was news of the war. For weeks, all we had heard about on the news was Yulon, and then, all we were hearing about was war. Drilled into our minds, was the idea that this middle-eastern nation was powerful and destructive, and that we had made ourselves their enemies.

I thought back to the day we dropped the bomb. The government said they didn't want to do it. They said they wouldn't kill these innocent people. But we rioted. How could you tell us all about their danger, but you don't want to wipe them out? The country turned into a mad house, and the only way to appease the people, was to drop the bomb. And so they did, and we were happy. It was questionable how easily they gave in, actually. Like it really wouldn't have taken much at all.

I thought back to that day, and I realized that there was only one thing fueling those riots - fear. We were so fearful that we'd be attacked; so fearful that our lives were at stake, and we weren't safe unless we did something about it. Before that, I could've never imagined a country so overcome with fear that they begged to kill 42,310 innocent civilians. How was everyone so encapsulated by horror, that they gave up all morality and forced our nation to drop a bomb?

Fear. Fear instilled by a disease. Fear expelled by a cure. Fear instilled by the cure.