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Chapter 215: A dark cloud upon humanity

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu

On this dry wintry day, Tong Lili was finally able to return home and rest under her own blanket after working for more than 30 hours in a row without sleep. Although she felt all sorts of dissatisfaction and unwillingness, her eyes would no longer open after becoming red and swollen from crying. She was far too tired.

Zhang Fan was also really tired. The 24-hour work shift plus having to concentrate for several more hours afterwards to perform surgery also made him feel rather dizzy. He closed the curtains in his apartment and took a hot shower. Thanks to the heating system, he didn’t feel cold in his apartment at all. The chilly air outside didn’t penetrate his apartment.

Winters in the border province were truly freezing. Currently, it was below -30 degrees Celsius. Any water particles in the air would instantly freeze into frost. The dry and cold temperature was also the best type of environment for viruses to grow in.

Whenever it was really dry, problems would often occur with the mucous membrane of the respiratory tract. The skin and mucous membrane were the first defense lines that human bodies had against illnesses. The dry and cold weather would cause viruses to run rampant.

The flu sounded rather weak in comparison to HIV, hepatis B, and so on. The flu might seem just like their weakly cousin who wasn’t threatening at all.

However, influenza had always accompanied humanity, and evolved together with humans. An astronomical number of humans had died because of the flu over the years. The strongest influenza pandemic of all time occurred in 1918. More than 100,000,000 people died, ravaging much of Europe.

The 1918 flu pandemic, also known as the Spanish flu, would attack all people indiscriminately. For most diseases, it would only be the young and the elderly who were at risk, or maybe men or women would be more likely to be affected, but that wasn’t the case with Spanish flu. No matter your age, how rich you were, or whether you were male or female, it would infect anyone. Although science was developing rapidly, the flu was also evolving. Even though humanity was now capable of standing on the moon, humanity had yet to discover a method to completely eradicate the flu.

Many people might look down on traditional Chinese medicine in modern times. However, it was precisely because of traditional Chinese medicine that the flu wasn’t so virulent in China. But in modern society, life had become more quick-paced, and nobody was now willing to patiently wait for a slow treatment.

With pressure from life and society, ordinary people now felt that they should be able to be cured on the second day right after becoming ill. They no longer accepted the idea that a common cold would require treatment for an entire month. In many jobs, every day of not working would represent not having income. Many ordinary people wouldn’t be able to afford this.

The beginning of flu symptoms wouldn’t be much different from the symptoms of an ordinary cold. The true differences would appear two to three days after the onset of symptoms. Only then would the flu show off its true might. Typically, this would start with a high fever of more than 39 degrees Celsius.

After that, you would start feeling all sorts of discomfort, such as feeling cold, headache, lack of energy, sore muscles, sore throat, and so on. If this was an ordinary flu virus, it would usually take approximately one week for your body to defeat the virus by itself. Only then would the flu symptoms slowly go away. And if your body couldn’t defeat the flu virus, then a secondary infection or bacterial pneumonia would likely soon occur. If you didn’t control the illness effectively then, only death would await. Not only that, you would become just like a living biological weapon as you were also a source of infection.

The main way by which the flu would spread would be through the air as well as saliva. The flu virus was capable of spreading as you talked, coughed, sneezed, and so on, flying out together with secretions from your respiratory tract. The scariest part about the flu virus was that it was capable of staying in the air for approximately 30 minutes.

Anywhere that many people gathered, a single sneeze from someone infected with the flu might infect everyone else within a radius of several dozen meters. This was no joke or laughing matter. Older Chinese people would probably all remember the SARS epidemic that had made all of China so tense. Back then, no matter big or small, all windows were constantly open. This was because only by having excellent ventilation would it be possible to reduce the amount of infection, especially in enclosed areas.

The flu felt quite simple. It was only a virus. But actually, the flu was incredibly complex and powerful. The flu was strong to the point where China even established a monitoring system for the flu. This was the only common illness that China focused so seriously on, even reaching the point where the entire medical system of China was being used to monitor this illness.

Influenza was a type of an RNA virus. It possessed many types of core polymerase proteins. Even now, scientists still hadn’t figured out the complete nature of the influenza virus. Not only that, the influenza virus was quite adept at mutating itself. When two different viruses simultaneously infected the same cell, the virus genes would then recombine themselves. It was often that a medicine which had previously been effective in treating this flu strain would suddenly lose effect after the mutation.

This was why the flu was so scary. Most of the time, ordinary treatment would treat problems without treating the underlying cause. What did this mean? It meant that treatment would focus on eliminating the patient’s discomfort by lowering fever temperatures, stopping the coughing, and eliminating the pain. However, none of this would affect the virus itself very much.

The flu virus had low heat tolerance, and ordinary disinfection methods would easily destroy it. However, heat and disinfection would no longer work once the flu virus was inside a human body. It wasn’t like you could burn the human patient! It really would be highly important to often wash your hands carefully every day in order to prevent yourself from getting infected.

The first two to three days after infection would be when the flu virus was the most infectious. However, this was also the time when people would pay the least attention to it. If one person got sick and didn’t pay it much attention, it was common that they would infect their entire family. Please don’t feel that it would be a sign of your love to lie next to your beloved one when they were sick. This author doesn’t know whether it’s a sign of love or not, but I do know that it means you’re an idiot.

Winter would always be an explosive season for the flu. Anyone who wasn’t ill yet that had family members with cold symptoms should put on a surgical mask in order to maintain his own health. Only then would you be able to properly care for ill family members!

Back when Chasu City Hospital was being run by Superintendent Huang Yun, his rotation doctor system was that doctors who wanted to be in a surgical department would only be rotated through the various surgical departments, while doctors who wanted to be in internal medicine would only be rotated through internal medicine departments. Although this did have its own benefits, the doctor wouldn’t learn as much general knowledge. Meanwhile, Superintendent Ouyang changed the rotation doctor system to forcefully make young doctors rotate through every type of department.

Superintendent Ouyang’s rotation doctor system seemed to be quite harsh for young doctors. This was because being a rotation doctor would last two years. For these two years, the young rotation doctors would have very low income, no status, and no sense of security. But, as long as the doctor made it past the two years of being a rotation doctor, they would be able to experience the benefit of rotation—having better general knowledge. Medical treatment would require general knowledge to begin with, yet over the past several decades, China had forsaken its roots in treating the foundation, instead learning the foreign methods of treating the head when there was a headache, treating the foot when the foot hurt, and so on. The downsides of this were now becoming apparent. China was now beginning to value general medical knowledge again instead of overly specialized knowledge.

Superintendent Ouyang was a superintendent who knew this quite well for a hospital leader in 2010. In fact, her rotation system showed its tremendous advantages right here and now.

A classical flu epidemic explosively arrived in Chasu City, and Chasu City Hospital’s respiratory department, cardiology department, and pediatrics department were filled to the brim with patients. Not only was adding more beds impossible, even patients who could only manage obtaining a bed in a hallway would already be those well-connected. The list of people waiting for hospitalization was incredibly long. Based on typical waiting times, these people would all likely have to wait until next year before they would finally receive an open spot for flu treatment.

What could be done? What was the hospital supposed to do about the flu epidemic when there was no more space for patients? The higher-level government leaders kept calling Superintendent Ouyang, and endlessly urged her to think of something! The hospital was supposed to be responsible for thinking of an idea!

Superintendent Ouyang had the entirety of Chasu City Hospital’s logistical staff clear out the main hallway of Chasu City Hospital. Although she was able to add a lot more space and hospital beds here, what was she supposed to do about the doctors and nurses required to treat the influx of patients? Where was she supposed to find so many professional doctors and nurses?

Superintendent Ouyang had an idea. She gave the command that all doctors and nurses who were currently on vacation, no matter if they were on marriage leave or sick leave, they were all required to come back to work as long as the doctor or nurse was still capable of walking!

Superintendent Ouyang was a strong and capable hospital leader who led with an iron fist!