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DAY 7: TOTAL CONFIRMED DEATHS 11,397 WORLDWIDE


Her state was officially now on lock-down. Early in the previous evening the state leader interrupted all telescreens for the announcement. There were 40 million Californians, and 56% of them could become infected in the next eight weeks. That meant 25.5 million people. Only “essential” businesses could remain open.

Shit was getting real.

***

Sometimes when a person walks closely to another, you can breathe them in. You don’t do it on purpose, but you inhale and discover an unfamiliar scent or taste, and you realize that you have sucked another person’s exhale into your own lungs. You feel strange having digested molecular parts of someone else, but there is nothing that can be done, you can’t cough it up or vomit it out with a finger.

She had gone out for a walk- still allowed though everyone had to practice social distancing as they did it. Six feet. That’s how far one had to keep away from every other person. The trail she used had a wide berth for most of the path, but there were a few places where the trail narrowed, especially since it had rained, creating muddy areas one had to navigate across. But as each person approached her anxiety spiked: six feet people, six feet! She closed her lips and counted to ten- don’t breathe them in! Don’t inhale their exhale! Nooooooooooooooo!

But it was too late.

Try as she might, there were a few people she inhaled. She could smell their cologne, deodorant, sweat- their natural disgusting scent. They tasted used soap and old gym socks.

***

The lady on the telescreen reported that a call was going out for anyone who knows how to sew to make face masks for health workers. The government spent each day lying to the people about how everything was under control, but this didn’t correlate with the cries from doctors and nurses on the front lines. Health workers were reusing masks by slathering them with hand sanitizer then passing them on. Such stories would be expected from a third-world country, but this was supposed to be the BEST country in the world! At least its citizens thought so. But with the election of a reality telescreen star who talked loudly, in incomplete and sometimes incoherent sentences, and with the vocabulary of a child (the people liked this), the pandemic was now placed in his tiny hands. The states had to rely on their own devices, with no help from the government. The Orange Leader was only concerned with what made him look good- and a high infection rate and a high death rate, made him look bad.

This, was his only concern.

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