Tales of the ‘Rona, Episode 1 - Bats

“I had a one-way ticket

To a place where all the demons go,

Where the wind don't change

And nothing in the ground can ever grow.

No hope, just lies,

And you're taught to cry in your pillow,

But I survived…

I'm still breathing, I'm still breathing

I'm still breathing, I'm still breathing 

I'm alive, I'm alive,

I'm alive, I'm alive…”

- Sia, “Alive”

Wuhan, China

Early December, 2019

A team of anxious researchers return from another trip canvassing caves in the wasteland of southern China looking to collect viruses from captured bats.

Bats.

Wild bats.

Wild bats that have been regularly trapped and contained for dissection and study.

The researchers fret openly, according to one report, about the risk of infection, as well they should.

The report details published cases of "bats biting their handlers, and tics that had been feeding on the bats later biting humans”.

Bats.

Wild bats.

The anxious researchers have come from one of two labs in Wuhan, China, both of which are perilously close to an infamous “wet market” where live wild animals are bought and sold.

One is the Institute of Virology, about eight miles from the market; the other is the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, barely 300 yards from the market.

Wet markets have been in existence since at least the 13th century when Marco Polo wrote about them.

"There are the ten principal markets...held three days in the week, frequented by 40,000 or 50,000 persons", observed the ancient explorer.

Polo expounded further:  "The daily supplies of fish came in great quantity, changing with the season, and owing to the impurities of the city which pass into the lake, it is remarkably fat and savoury".

50,000 people.

Crowded spaces.

City impurities flowing into lakes.

Sounds lovely.

Sounds like wet markets were virus-fertile-grounds in Polo’s day too. 

But this isn’t the 13th century.

The Washington Post reported in 2018 that U.S. diplomats in China warned of “a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate” the Institute of Virology. 

“The Wuhan CDC operates at even lower biosafety standards”, the report warned.

The official narrative out of Beijing was that the Coronavirus pandemic that afflicted the globe originated in the Wuhan wild animal wet market.

Bat to human contact.

Bats.

But another theory said that the first known cases had no contact with the wet market, that there was no evidence the market even sold bats, and that the bat species from which the virus was thought to have jumped to humans wasn't found within 100 miles of Wuhan.

Other theories have since suggested  more intentional, diabolical, political and conspiratorial origins of the Corona virus.

Whether bat contact from a lab or a wet market, intentional or accidental, the virus traveled and it traveled fast.

Olympia Fields, Illinois 

January 26

ICU, Franciscan Health 

I can’t breathe.

Something is wrong with me, something very, very wrong.

It’s 3AM.

It’s dark.

It’s quiet.
It’s lonely and I’m anxious.

I can’t breathe.

I’m anxious too, like those Wuhan researchers.

Earlier that day, along with cautionary tales of how close I was to dying, my infectious disease doctor (and how often in life should you have to say “my infectious disease doctor”?) had shared with me that yes, another man down the hall from me hadn’t survived.

He showed similar signs (“presented” is the medical term) to what I had, and he had come in around the same time that I had.

He didn’t make it.

He stopped breathing.

Apparently I was presenting much worse, but I was still holding on, and the medical team was scrambling trying to determine what exactly this was that I was presenting.

I don’t know what normal protocol for doctors is when it comes to telling patients near-death stories, but mine had decided I was on a need to know basis.

So it’s 3AM and this is what I’m trying to process.

Presenting.

Breathing.

I had no idea about bats.

Yet.

Once during a concert, a fan threw a bat onto the stage where Ozzy Osbourne of Black Sabbath fame was performing.

Ozzy thought it was a fake plastic toy so, Ozzy being Ozzy, picked it up and bit its’ head off.

The bat was very real and Ozzy grabbed some headlines along with a mouthful of bat.

“I got rabies shots for biting the head off a bat but that's okay” said Ozzy. “The fucking bat had to get Ozzy shots.”

I didn’t have rabies, and there were no Ozzy shots for my bats.

Time appeared to be running out, and my freshly assembled medical team was scrambling.

Scrambling trying to identify this very real, very lethal monster inside me.

It was 3AM, I was in ICU and I was thinking it would really be much easier for me to just stop breathing.

Just.

Stop.

Breathing.