Is the typhoon wind field map the source of transmission?

Dean Yang had just gotten off the plane. Without even stopping to rest, he brought a group of doctors straight to Central Hospital.

After putting on hazmat suits that offered only symbolic protection, he and his colleagues hurried to the special isolation ward.

An entire top floor had been cleared out for the special isolation ward. Guardrails and temporary disinfection tents had been installed in the fire stairwells, and the elevators had been blocked off.

Everyone coming up had to pass through a disinfection tent.

There were no medical staff anywhere on the entire top floor, only members of the medical support teams.

After a quick spray-down in the disinfection tent, Professor Yang entered the nearest ward first.

In the dim ward, six patients lay motionless in their beds, letting out only faint murmurs.

He first took out a flashlight and checked the pupil response of the nearest patient, then examined the patient according to standard procedure. The doctors behind him arrived one after another after being disinfected and began examining the other patients.

The basic examination was quick, and Dean Yang, who had been treating patients for so many years, was especially experienced. He finished examining the patient in no time.

"It's just like the report we received. Aside from malnutrition and being a little below par health-wise, there's nothing visibly wrong."

Dean Yang put away his flashlight and looked at the doctors beside the other beds.

"Dean Yang, it's the same with mine. I can't find anything wrong."

"Same here."

"This one too, though they look a little short on exercise."

"The symptoms they have now are all from being bedridden for a long time. Any normal person would be like this after lying still for two days."

Dean Yang thought for a moment and waved a hand. "All right, I understand. I remember there are other medical teams here. They arrived earlier, so let's go ask what they've found."

"I think they're at the nurses' station."

With such a bizarre infectious disease, regular medical staff were now barred from coming up to this floor. The medical support teams also avoided going downstairs whenever possible, so the conveniently located nurses' station had naturally been modified to serve as their headquarters.

Dean Yang pushed open the door and saw the heavily modified nurses' station at a glance. Good grief, they had somehow squeezed an enormous disinfection tent into the little station.

Even the passageway was completely blocked.

After the group went through another round of disinfection in the tent, they spotted the largest office and walked in, only to find their footing give way.

They almost tripped.

Fortunately, they caught themselves on the doorframe in time.

Inside, all kinds of equipment were scattered across the floor. Several people in bright yellow, airtight Level A suits had their backs to them, all looking at the computer monitor on the desk against the far wall.

There was a vortex on the screen. Dean Yang took a closer look and thought it resembled a typhoon map from a weather forecast.

"Hey, who's in charge here?"

Dean Yang patted the nearest person and asked.

The person suddenly gave a start and looked at Dean Yang in confusion.

"Huh? Where did you come from? Weren't people barred from coming up to this floor?"

"We're the South China Medical Support Team. I'm the one leading it, Yang Tianyou."

"You're Dean Yang? Oh, I've heard of you. I even recommended your published work, Virus–Cell Transmission Studies, to my students. I didn't expect you to come here too. Is it because of this infectious disease?"

"Let's get down to business. Who's in charge here?"

The man gave a wry smile. "No one here will defer to anyone else, especially after our teams lost members. The atmosphere's gotten even worse. I have a doctorate in microbiology from North China Medical College, and I'm with the North China Faction's medical team. Call me Xiao Wu. Whatever you want to know, ask me."

"All right, I'll ask you. You've been here so long. Have you found anything? Have you figured out the mechanism of the disease or its route of transmission?"

"No, we haven't found anything. Our team even suspects the pathogen might not exist at all."

"How is that possible? You should at least be able to narrow down some suspected pathogens."

Xiao Wu looked even more helpless. "We really haven't found anything. The higher-ups gave us a lot of authority this time. Every well-known laboratory in coastal Zhuming has been fully cooperating with us. We've spent nearly a million on specimen testing alone."

Dean Yang frowned and looked at the people still inside. His group had come in and spoken with Xiao Wu, yet not one of them had turned around.

"Even so, you shouldn't be sitting around watching the weather forecast. What are you doing?"

Xiao Wu looked over and sighed.

"I don't know if you've heard, but the same symptoms have appeared elsewhere."

"What?" Dean Yang could hardly believe it. "We just got off the plane. Tell me exactly what happened."

"You just got off the plane? No wonder." Xiao Wu nodded. "The higher-ups just notified us that, two days ago, people at the weather stations in Kuanghai, Changping, and Fangjiang also developed these symptoms. But the symptoms were very mild, and there were very few cases. They didn't show signs of delirium, so it was judged to be fainting caused by fatigue."

"What happened after that?"

"As their condition progressed, the patients also developed delirium today. Alert local doctors reported the cases, and the patients have now been isolated as well."

"What about the cause? What caused them to develop this condition? These coastal cities are hundreds of kilometers apart. Surely the source of infection can't spread it across that distance?"

Xiao Wu looked as though he had seen a ghost.

Dean Yang's heart skipped a beat. "That look on your face... Don't tell me you know something?"

Xiao Wu wanted to scratch his head, but his Level A protective suit covered him completely. He moved his arm, then had to give up.

"That's right. After the cases were reported, people suspected some kind of sabotage targeting the weather stations, so the police investigated. The weather stations were all operating at the time, and everyone was keeping a close eye on this typhoon. After all, it could very well hit land and bring an unimaginable amount of moisture from the Pacific. You know, the Japanese have recently..."

Dean Yang was getting impatient. "Kid, why are you telling me all this? Get to the point. What do you know about the source and route of transmission?"

"Yes, that."

Xiao Wu pointed at the monitor, where the typhoon wind field map was slowly rotating.

"What?"

"Yes, that wind field map. At least, that's what the people at the Academy of Sciences think."

"You've got to be joking. Don't mess around with me."

"It's true. The police gathered surveillance footage and established that the only thing they all did before falling ill at the same time, despite being hundreds of kilometers apart, was look at this animated wind field map."

"How's that possible?" Dean Yang even slipped into his hometown dialect. "That video isn't a virus or a microorganism. It's just signals. How the hell could it infect anyone?"

"We didn't believe it either. Look, everyone's watching it. The police sent this over, and everyone's trying to see if it's really true."

The newly arrived doctors had also been listening intently to the conversation. Now they all wore the same baffled expression as an old man staring at a phone on the subway, every one of their worldviews dealt a heavy blow.

"Could it be something like hypnosis? Has a psychologist come to take a look?"

"Yes, but they're just as baffled..."

"If it's true, aren't you all courting death? Staring straight at it like that?"

Xiao Wu looked at Dean Yang, his voice full of dejection. "Several of my junior brothers and sisters on our medical team have gone down, but we still haven't made any progress. All we can do is stand helplessly by and watch the patients slowly wait for death. You may laugh at us, but this is the only lead we've had in the past two days. We can't afford not to follow it."

Hearing that, Dean Yang sighed.

"All right, keep watching it for now. I'll talk it over with my doctors."

"Okay. A copy of this video was also saved on the computer on the nurses' station desk."

Dean Yang nodded and looked at the doctors, whose attention was fixed entirely on the monitor. "All right, everyone, don't stand idle. Bring all this equipment with you. We'll run another examination."

"Whether it's true or not, we'll discuss it later and see what's really going on."