Public Health

2033 December 28 14:45 UT
Test Year 6, Day 342, 14:00 CST
Tau, CIT, Venkat Sakhar’s Clinic

While it went through bureaucracy and a lot of argument, at first the new government did not have much to do except for civil service, organizing rotations on crop duty and garbage collection. Then came the epidemic.

The first four years of children had been vaccinated from the stockpiles of the Health Centers. After this point, even frozen vaccines were not trustworthy and the supply had grown quite short. By then, however, herd immunity had dissipated almost all diseases that had been brought from Earth: influenza did not bother the populations of either California or Massachusetts. Before they life Earth everyone in the first generation had already been vaccinated for measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis, pertussis, diphteria. The small number of HIV patients did not spread their virus to anyone else. Even most of the human-only bacteria died out: staph did not survive well with such a small population. So the children grew up very healthy for a long time. This could not last, of course.

Amy Gou was the first confirmed victim of the virus. She was old enough to lose her first baby teeth, but she did not. Instead, she started to complain about pain in her upper jaw. When Will ran an X-ray, he found that the tooth wasn’t being shed properly. The tissue at the base was too fibrous, although her other teeth seemed clean. Amy wasn’t the first case where he’d seen this. The first one might have been a coincidence; two in a row worried him enough that he took a blood sample during the procedure to extract the tooth.

The DNA scan showed Amy’s own homo sapiens markers, and a few residual viruses that she carried without any incident. And there were also a bundle of markers that at first seemed to be Tau-form contaminant. But they showed up in samples taken from the other dental patient, Will himself, Sakhar, and a few others. A Tau virus had finally adapted to human biochemistry. Its only effect seemed to be this binding of deciduous teeth. The new Ministry of Public Health made a vaccine quickly, and a treatment three months after, so that only a few more children had to be subjected to invasive dentistry.

The next epidemic was nothing anywhere as severe. The proas brought a couple of purely Earth-form respiratory viruses across the ocean from California and seeded the Massachusetts bugs there on their return trip. Will just worked through it, but Z was not a particularly good patient. A four-year-old boy who has never been sick before tends to lose his sense of compassion. Sakhar wanted a culture of the virus to check for any suspect mutations, so Will walked his son up to the biologist’s lab. After he picked up a new supply of insulin – fortunately, his diabetes was not inheritable – the two talked.

There was the incidental discussion of the biochemist being an official Minister in the Techer government, followed by his honor the Minister’s current projects and Will’s concern for his kids. “Will their immune systems be compromised if and when we get visitors from Earth?”

“This generation still has antibodies to everything that we brought with us. Their children may not, but by then there will be more Tau-terrestrial hybrid bugs. There won’t be any immune system decay, but they may be vulnerable to particular bugs. That’s what vaccination and antibiotics will be for, unless something drastic has happened back home. They’ll be fine.”