The first wave of Covid-19 vaccines are just weeks away. But before you obliterate your memories of 2020, we need to prepare for the next pandemic with a thought experiment. Journey with me to a world where FOX News owns Twitter, and Lady Gaga’s production company is making an action comedy based on Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist masterpiece The Second Sex. Welcome to the shining future of 2030.
But uh oh. President Winfrey has just announced that the CDC is reporting a new infectious disease they’re calling “respiratory agent disorder,” or RAD for short. Slightly deadlier than the flu, RAD is spreading quickly in China. Nobody is sure yet how deadly it might get, so President Winfrey is urging people to wash their hands, wear masks, practice social distancing, and wait for the vaccine in a few months.
Superspreader warehouse
In a suburb outside Seattle, Daisy is starting her day at 6AM so she can drop off her kids before heading to Amazon’s drone delivery warehouse. She feels like crap and has a cough, but what else is new? She always feels like garbage when she wakes up and remembers how Amazon crushed the warehouse worker’s union last year, and she lost her chance to get health insurance. Daisy heard about RAD on her favorite morning podcast, but it’s all the way over in China. So she’s not worried.
At the Amazon warehouse, Daisy hurries to wave her prox card over the digital punch clock, and change into her coveralls. A sign next to the locker room says that face masks are coming soon, and be sure to use hand sanitizer. Of course, the dispenser is empty.
The company tracks her movement through the warehouse and deducts every second not spent on the packing line. Then she starts on the perilously boring work of packaging customer orders for drone delivery. She opens a crate of phones, repacking each slick, white box into a grippable cardboard Amazon container. Even when she has a coughing fit, Daisy doesn’t stop working. She doesn’t want to lose a single second of pay.
After the covid-19 scare, it was easy for Amazon to push its drone delivery service into mainstream use. Customers love getting their packages from drones because it feels more sanitary and safe. Everything from food to toilet paper goes into the Amazon boxes specially made to fit into the grippers that dangle from the bellies of the company’s drone fleet.
Nobody seems to realize that humans are still required to load the drones. Every package that comes from an Amazon drone has passed through many human hands. When a tech worker in Richmond receives his new phone, he thinks the slick cellophane package has been extruded from some kind of magical machine that contains no microbes. Unfortunately for him, it’s covered in little droplets straight from Daisy’s mouth.
Pockets of RAD start to spring up in isolated areas all around Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. Disease experts are stumped. What’s the connection between Stockton, CA and Bellingham, WA? And then they realize: these are all areas serviced by Amazon drone deliveries.
As more people fall sick, Amazon suspends deliveries. But it’s too late. RAD is everywhere. Daisy stays home, drinking fluids and cold medicine, wondering how she’ll pay if she actually gets so sick that she has to go to the doctor.
Pharmacy rebellion
Four months later, in Norman, Oklahoma, a young pharmacist named Amina is opening the prescription window at the Walmart where she works. News alerts about RAD are blowing up her phone. Millions of Americans are suffering, the death toll is modest but rising, and millions more are likely to come down with the virus. The good news is that there’s a vaccine available, and she’s gotten the first shipment today. The bad news is that it costs $200 per dose. Most health insurance companies will cover it, but Amina can’t remember the last time she had a customer with health insurance.
Pharmaceutical company executives are all over the news explaining that they just can’t bear the financial burden of rapidly prototyping a vaccine. They say the price point is already lower than it should be. People have savings, they say. They have insurance. It’s going to be fine.
Amina’s first customer comes in and asks for the RAD vaccine. She’s an admin at the university who comes in once a month to renew her arthritis scrip, and she wants to know if Amina can give her the vaccine on layaway. That’s not a service Walmart offers, and Amina knows this woman will never be able to pay her off. She opens her mouth to say no and cite Walmart policy. And then she looks at the woman, her familiar face, and stops. She has the vaccine. This woman needs it. Why shouldn’t she just--give it to her? It’s an intense, dizzying moment.
She tells her customer not to worry, and administers the vaccine right there, over the counter. As she tosses the alcohol wipes and packaging into the trash next to her feet, Amina considers the fact that she’s become a criminal. She will probably be fired. But she doesn’t have time to spiral because her next customer has arrived for his shot.
Word about the free vaccines starts to spread, faster than the virus itself. Amina spends the day depleting Walmart’s supply of expensive vaccines, wondering when she’ll get caught. What she doesn’t expect is that a group of DSA activists from the university will film her pirate vaccine operation covertly, and post a video online called “the last good pharmacist in America.” #freethevaccines #stopRAD
Of course the video explodes across every social media network. Amina is inundated with media requests, and her instant celebrity means the supply of vaccine to her Walmart is cut off instantly. But other pharmacists are posting about their own pirate vaccine operations. If you can’t get a vaccine in Norman, you can go to Oklahoma City. Or Lawton. Or Tulsa. It’s happening all over the country. Journalists are have started calling Amina “the last good pharmacist in America” too, and her followers are “the good pharmacy squad.”
Reps from the drug company who made the vaccine are on all the major television networks, calling Amina dangerous, and warning the public not to trust free vaccines. Who knows what could be in them? If you pay $200, they say, you know you’re getting the real deal.
Amina knows the pharmacy rebellion can’t last. Eventually supplies will be totally cut off. But for now, during the precious 48 hours of free vaccines, it’s possible they stopped the spread of RAD among the most vulnerable groups. It’s possible they reminded people that we’re all in this together. When she’s not freaking out about losing her job, Amina wonders whether the squad might have changed the world, just a little bit. Maybe that’s enough. Or maybe not.
My next book is Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age. It's coming out in February 2021, and you can pre-order it now. You can find information and ordering links for my other books on my website, helpfully organized into science fiction and journalism. You can also follow me on Twitter or Instagram — or listen to Our Opinions Are Correct, the fortnightly podcast I co-host with Charlie Jane Anders. If someone forwarded this email to you, you can subscribe to it here.