The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 170: They Were All at Risk

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

Especially those with a pre-existing condition…

The ocean delights us as playful otters restore coastal kelp forests. The ocean teaches us how our choices impact even the deepest places. The ocean connects us. Visit Monterey Bay Aquarium.org slash connects. This is the way I heard it. No one knows for sure where the epidemic originated. Some believe it started in a wet market, where animals were butchered and sold to the public.

Others maintain it was developed in a medical facility. regardless of its origins, the epidemic officially began as all epidemics do with Patient Zero. In this case, Patient Zero was a 43-year-old mother of five with a pre-existing condition. According to medical records, she was out for an evening stroll when she experienced a sudden shortness of breath, followed by an inability to swallow or speak. In moments, her breathing became labored, her heart rate skyrocketed, and her blood pressure dropped.

Ironically, she collapsed 100 yards from the hospital, just a few steps from where her life might have been saved. The experts were baffled by patient zero's sudden demise. Baffled, but not worried. A single, unexplained, fatality was no reason to assume an epidemic was on the horizon, especially when the victim was already at risk. But then, a week later, patient zero was followed, as patient zeros always are, by patient number two, another individual who died in the exact same way, a sudden shortness of

breath, followed by an inability to swallow or speak. Two patients. Two patients. each from the same neighborhood, each at risk with the same pre-existing condition, each dead of the same cause. Technically, it might be inaccurate to call them patients, since both victims died before the doctors had a chance to treat them. But they were certainly patients during their autopsies, and once those were completed, while the mystery surrounding their deaths only deepened. This was not the flu.

This was something altogether different. The next morning's headlines got people talking. Two mysterious deaths, not a single clue. On the positive side, if this was the beginning of an outbreak, the spread was relatively slow. In fact, three weeks after patient zero succumbed, there were still just two cases, which meant that containment

should have been easy. Unfortunately, the experts couldn't agree on how to handle the situation. Instead of locking down the epicenter, they dithered and dallied and hoped the problem would simply go away on its own. But then, a third victim was carried off to the morgue, followed by a fourth, barely an hour later. Now, the experts were worried. Something deadly was on the move.

something novel that posed a unique threat to at-risk individuals with a pre-existing condition. It had no official name, so the press dubbed it the invisible killer and turned their entire attention to covering each new case in exhaustive detail. Every day there was a new headline that positively dripped with dread. Death stalks the city. Who will be the next to perish? No one's safe from invisible killer. For the media, bad news was good news, and nothing sold newspapers like an invisible killer

slowly weeding out society's most vulnerable. Over time, though, all the fear-mongering took a toll as fear-mongering always does. With no expert consensus, no political leadership, and no context or perspective in the constant reporting, the people didn't know what to believe. Soon, every new fatality was blamed on this invisible killer, including many deaths that were completely unrelated. It was then that the people's uncertainty turned to fear, and their fear to panic.

Stay safe, the expert said. Stay home. And so the people did. They locked themselves down. even healthy people who were not at risk, people with no pre-existing condition, they hold themselves away, convinced that the invisible killer was coming for them. Those who dared to venture outside were careful to keep their distance from strangers, and those who met the gaze of passers-by did so with a deep and profound suspicion. So terrifying was the prospect of dying that many of the people remained. locked down for months.

Even when the cases began to decline, their fear remained. Even when the fatalities dropped to zero, their panic persisted, a moral panic, inspired by an invisible killer that posed no danger to 99.99.99% of the population. Hard to imagine such a thing happening today, but once upon a time, epidemics like these were common. This one started with the mysterious death of an at-risk, 43-year-old mother of five named Marianne Nichols, and concluded with the demise of Mary Jane Kelly, another woman who suffered from the same pre-existing condition. Her death, like all the others, made the front of her death. page, along with the detailed description of her corpse.

Quote, the victim's left arm was entirely severed. Her abdomen expertly dissected. Her liver surgically removed and carefully placed between her feet. Her forehead skin from her skull like the hide of an animal and the tender flesh from her thighs stripped away and placed on the bedside table along with her nose and breasts. Such was the handiwork of the unknown assailant who murdered five at-risk women, five prostitutes whose vocation turned out to be the pre-existing condition that put them at risk in the first place and whose grisly deaths spawned an epidemic, an epidemic of fear that paralyzed an entire city, fueled by a craven media determined to sell newspapers,

and the killer they wrote about every single day for months on end. The invisible killer, who some believed worked as a butcher in a wet market, but who experts now say was, in fact, a doctor. A demented doctor, whose skill with a scalpel was likely devout. developed in the hospital, barely 100 yards from the spot where his first victim was overcome by a sudden shortness of breath, moments after a blade was ripped across her neck, and her mutilated body left to bleed out on the merry old streets of London. A bloody beginning for the novel psychopath, we remember as the first modern-day serial killer.

Jack the Ripper. Anyway, that's the way I heard it. The ocean delights us. Some marvel at the colorful world below the surface. The ocean feeds us. Others find nourishment in its bounty. The ocean teaches us how our everyday choices impact even the deepest places. The ocean moves us, whether we're riding a wave or soaking in its breathtaking beauty.

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