The first day, it was just an item on Carrie's news feed. She was riding to school, taking advantage of the free wi-fi on the bus and the twenty-five minute commute to campus to check up on her social media, and one of her friends posted it to their page with the comment, "Dang, Nebraska! Smooch much?"
Cassie clicked on the link, and an article popped up with the headline, 'New Strain Of Mononucleosis Hits Nebraska Town'. She scrolled down, more because the article was small than because it was interesting. "Valentine, Nebraska," it said, "has recently earned a little unwanted fame due to an outbreak of a new strain of mononucleosis that has affected as many as 1,100 out of its population of 2,737. The town, best known for the special postmarks it places on Valentine's Day envelopes, first began reporting cases last week.
"CDC officials in Atlanta have stated there is no cause for concern-although the strain does appear to be affecting adults who have previously been exposed to the Epstein-Barr virus, the symptoms seem to be relatively mild and mental and physical fatigue are being reported as the most noticeable sign of infection. It seems unlikely, though, that this year people will want a Valentine's Day card that has been licked by one of the residents of this small town."
Cassie chuckled to herself and closed the article without giving it another thought. She distracted herself with cat videos and Internet memes, and when it popped up in her feed again just before she got to campus, she didn't bother looking at it a second time. Valentine, Nebraska was utterly removed from her day-to-day life, fifteen hundred miles away and smaller than the university she attended. It didn't seem like anything there could possibly matter to her.
That didn't stop her from showing the article to Lacey over lunch, when it popped up on her feed again between classes. "Did you see this one, Lace?" she asked. "You're pre-med, I'm sure someone must have forwarded it to you."
Lacey nodded, her face tinged with just a hint of exasperation. "I think I've seen it seven times this morning," she said. "It's all over my timeline." She paused, the hint of a smile breaking across her face. "It's totally going viral." She waggled her eyebrows as her smile broadened. "Get it? Eh? Eh?"
Carrie threw a french fry at her, and steered the conversation to the calculus homework that was due in just under two hours. She put thoughts of Valentine, Nebraska out of her mind for the day.
*****
The fourth day, it was trending on Twitter. "#KissingDisease spreads like wildfire across Nebraska," one tweet said, with a link to an article that said the victim count in Valentine was up to 2,520 confirmed cases and hospitals in six nearby towns had admitted patients with symptoms matching the new strain. The CDC admitted that the new strain appeared to be highly contagious, and advised against 'exchanging saliva' (Cassie snorted at that) with anyone who had traveled through Nebraska in the past four to seven weeks. They continued to insist that there was no cause for alarm, though, as the symptoms of the disease remained mild and there had been no serious cases.
Cassie got to the campus center expecting to find everyone talking about it, but apparently there was a rumor that the Terps were going to fire the women's basketball coach. As it was, only Byron, her lab partner in Chemistry, even mentioned it. "Did you see what the CDC said?" he asked her.
She nodded. "Something about not kissing anyone from Nebraska." She smiled, but he didn't smile back.
"Anyone who's been to Nebraska," he corrected. "In the last four to seven weeks. That's the incubation period for mono. I did a little research online," and Cassie made a personal decision not to roll her eyes at that point, because Byron was one of those guys who was always an expert after five minutes on Wikipedia, "and it says you can be contagious even before displaying symptoms. So you can be infecting people and not even know it."
Cassie nodded, suddenly wishing she cared more about basketball. Byron seemed a little too into this. "Yeah, it's got to be rough for the people who live out there," she said.
Byron put his hands to his temples, then gestured outward explosively. "Don't you get it?" he said melodramatically. "That CDC warning isn't worth shit! All these people from Nebraska have had a month to spread this stuff around, maybe even two, and they've probably given it to people who've given it to other people by now. The CDC is telling people to watch out for everyone who's been to Nebraska, but by now there's a ton of other people who have it and don't even know it!"
"Well, yeah, okay," Cassie said, both because he was probably right and because Byron had a tendency to keep raising his voice until you agreed with him. "But I mean, it's not dangerous, right? I had mono in junior high. You just feel like shit for a few weeks and all you want to do is sleep."
"It's going to have a huge economic impact," Byron said ominously. "I read that it could cost the United States up to two hundred million dollars in lost wages and productivity."
After long moments of internal debate, Carrie asked the question that was bouncing up and down in the front of her head, demanding to be asked. "Where did you read that?"
"There's a whole thread about it on Reddit," he said. Carrie bit her tongue, but he must have seen the look on her face because he said, "There were a lot of people saying that! It wasn't just one guy or anything!"
Carrie decided to ask what Byron thought about the basketball coach.
Later that day, on her way home, she messaged her friend Gena, who'd decided to go to school in Kansas City. "Any sign of mono out your way?" she asked, adding a smiley face at the end just in case Gena had gotten one too many queries like that in the last few days.
"3 or 4," Gena responded after an hour or two. "All in quarantine. No biggie, I don't kiss w/tongue."
Carrie shot her back a ":P" smiley, followed by, "Look out! Kissing monster gonna get U!" That was the last she thought about it that day.
*****
By day seven, CNN had started round-the-clock coverage. Seventeen states were now reporting cases, and the CDC was encouraging anyone who was symptomatic to voluntarily quarantine themselves. "While the disease does appear to be mild," a spokesman said at a press conference that the news networks seemed determined to repeat every twenty minutes, "this is nonetheless a disease that we are taking very seriously. Please make every effort to avoid contact with infected individuals, and if you are infected, please try your best not to spread the disease."