a mutated form of 'Toxoplasma gondii', one that was completely resistant to all the antibiotics and other medications thrown at it. The insidious thing about this infection, the one trait that really made it the real 'winner' of our history books - if we'd had any left - is that many of us already carried it in a latent form. Easily obtained from contaminated meat or from the beloved household cat, it was largely considered not to be a health threat unless the infected person had a weak immune system or was pregnant. Most people were unaware of their status as a carrier and of the disease in general. Next to the more visceral killers like AIDS, Toxoplasmosis seemed as dangerous as a kitten with a ball of yarn. We were consistently lazy in testing and prevention, even with the risk of passing it on to the next generation. It was rare to find a country that did screen for it and fatal cases were even more uncommon.
Until one summer when amidst all the squabbles, suffering and small moments of brilliance that make up human existence we were brutally introduced to the new and improved version of Toxoplasmosis, or TPM-2 as the media dubbed it. The first recognised cases were in Detroit, which is in a part of the land that was once called Michigan. No one was really paying attention then, because Detroit was already well on it's way to irrelevance in the social consciousness well before the pandemic. Only when people started to die did it become interesting to the rest of the country, but by then there was no containing the spread to one unfortunate city, or even one state. Half of the upper United States was already infected with symptoms presenting slowly over a period of weeks, culminating in swelling of the brain or vital organs, rupturing retinas (if one was particularly unlucky), and finally, death. No one with the parasite escaped the final part of that equation despite the best efforts of the most educated of scientific minds in the country. Suddenly the daily pursuits of the masses were not quite as important as they were the day before. People begun to consume current events with a zeal that would have given media companies real reason to celebrate if they hadn't be consumed by the news themselves. Regardless of in which language it was conveyed, none of the news was promising. The best medical and scientist researchers in Europe, Asia, the Americas, all had a universal response: 'We just don't know how to stop it'. No medicine they tried, no regime of treatment was effective in controlling the parasite enough to prevent a fatal infection. The recommendations of prevention were meager at best: avoid meat products, contact with animals or their fecal matter and crowds of people to minimize the possibility of transfer.
Just a few months after the first fatal cases of what was later termed TPM-2, the world economies were executing a graceful swan dive into the concrete, and martial law or no law at
Until one summer when amidst all the squabbles, suffering and small moments of brilliance that make up human existence we were brutally introduced to the new and improved version of Toxoplasmosis, or TPM-2 as the media dubbed it. The first recognised cases were in Detroit, which is in a part of the land that was once called Michigan. No one was really paying attention then, because Detroit was already well on it's way to irrelevance in the social consciousness well before the pandemic. Only when people started to die did it become interesting to the rest of the country, but by then there was no containing the spread to one unfortunate city, or even one state. Half of the upper United States was already infected with symptoms presenting slowly over a period of weeks, culminating in swelling of the brain or vital organs, rupturing retinas (if one was particularly unlucky), and finally, death. No one with the parasite escaped the final part of that equation despite the best efforts of the most educated of scientific minds in the country. Suddenly the daily pursuits of the masses were not quite as important as they were the day before. People begun to consume current events with a zeal that would have given media companies real reason to celebrate if they hadn't be consumed by the news themselves. Regardless of in which language it was conveyed, none of the news was promising. The best medical and scientist researchers in Europe, Asia, the Americas, all had a universal response: 'We just don't know how to stop it'. No medicine they tried, no regime of treatment was effective in controlling the parasite enough to prevent a fatal infection. The recommendations of prevention were meager at best: avoid meat products, contact with animals or their fecal matter and crowds of people to minimize the possibility of transfer.
Just a few months after the first fatal cases of what was later termed TPM-2, the world economies were executing a graceful swan dive into the concrete, and martial law or no law at
