The Laptev Virus

“Shane,” said Sarah.

“I was just saying,” he said, smirking and shrugging his shoulders.

“I was thinking about how the virus could have infected the men,” said Tally. “It’s an entirely different situation from when the AIDS virus debuted in Africa. Of course, HIV is transmitted from body fluids of infected hosts, and Ebola is the same, but with this virus, there were no infected fluids. Plus, it’s really cold there, so people were covered up, for the most part, so I wondered about transmission. I did some reading about the weather conditions up there in Laptev Bay, and it was clear that the workers would have been fully suited up in clothing to protect them from the weather, including gloves, though in the summer it doesn’t look like facial gear is used.”

Sarah nodded. She too had recognized that the fact that the ice core sample had been dropped and broken had probably played a role in transmitting the virus.

“Also, I was thinking about the lab technicians who got infected after the outdoor crew had been exposed. Both sets of men contracted the viral infection within hours of each other. Therefore it could not have been the ones who retrieved the ice core sample who were responsible for infecting the lab techs. It was too short a time frame for the outdoor workers to have developed a high enough titer of virus in their systems to become infectious.”

“That makes sense,” said Shane, scratching his chin. “In just a couple of hours those outdoor workers would not have been sick enough to be sneezing the virus to someone else yet.”

“Exactly. So the lab techs had to have become ill from the direct source of the virus. I read up about standard procedure for analyzing ice core samples, and I realized that the lab techs had probably always worked with prior ice cores in a completely protected environment because they wanted to be able to calculate the amount of gases trapped in the air bubbles, and if the sample was exposed to air, that data would have been invalid.”

“So, you were thinking that Laptev could possibly have been a danger before, if it was present in other ice core samples, but it was one that no one realized because when they followed standard protocol, no one was ever exposed and consequently, no one got sick,” said Emile.

Sarah noticed out of the corner of her eye that Miquela was nodding, enthralled in the conversation. Shane, however, looked bored, and Kevin, who had decided to sit in on the meeting, was, as usual, keeping quiet but tapping away on his phone.

Tally nodded enthusiastically, her short dark blonde hair, loose again from the tie, was bobbing as she spoke. “Precisely. And so I was thinking about what was different this time. Why were they more exposed? It occurs to me that since the lab techs knew that the sample had been dropped and cracked open, they were no longer looking for data that could only be extracted from intact, uncontaminated samples. So they probably didn’t take the normal precautions such as placing the samples in a sterile and enclosed environment as they had always done before. They would still have proceeded in a climate controlled environment, to keep the ice from melting too quickly, and worked with it under aseptic conditions, but they would not have necessarily worn protective masks, not supposing that anything virulent could be present.”

“Agreed,” said Sarah. “I bet you’re right.”

“They live in close quarters and it’s always cold, so when people began getting sick, it would not have initially have been a cause for alarm.”

“Until the symptoms of hemorrhagic fever emerged and everyone started bleeding all over the place,” said Shane. Sarah was surprised for she had thought that he was not paying attention at all, but he obviously was.

“…by which time it was too late to take effective isolation and quarantine measures. That’s why everyone, or nearly everyone, was exposed in a pretty short time span,” concluded Tally.

“Riesigoil’s quick response certainly helped to save lives. If only the storm hadn’t hit and they could have evacuated the crew even quicker,” said Drew.

Everyone was silent as they contemplated that thought.

“Got anything else?” asked Sarah, flexing her knee slightly as her sore leg was getting stiff.

“Yeah, here’s one more thing that I found interesting. What I was wondering is how did this virus get there in the first place? I mean, how did it get into the ice in Laptev Bay? Since not all viruses affect all animals, I figured that those poor workers who became ill were probably not the first humans to come in contact with the virus,” said Tally.