The CEOs pushed, they pushed hard, too hard, for too long. Everything has a breaking point, and all the CRC had to do was sit back, relax, then send in mop up teams and medics after the empire collapsed. -- Anon Guest
The thing with Deregger planets is that they're all in favour of business getting their way. They're not in favour of anything related to "individual welfare". They're thoroughly for people pulling themselves up by the bootstraps, and then heavily taxing any and all shoelaces.
The eternal piracy of privatisation has its detriments. Mostly via revolution when the greater populace gets sick and tired of the lies from on high. For Greater Deregulation Lower North West, it came via disease.
"It's our right to refuse the Offworlder plague they call the immunoflu," raged their Executive Commander in Chief. "Those frankenbugs are pushed through way too fast! Give us the old tried and true! Survival of the fittest! Those who don't survive never deserved to live! We do not run welfare for the weak!" Which made great rhetoric to gain votes and sponsors, but did nothing to stop the latest variants from spreading through the populace.
Whatever the Mediks of the Alliance recommended, the Executive in Chief made political. Essential PPE was weakness and displayed fear. Locking down the infected areas was submitting to their terror campaign. Accepting any kind of medicine from the Alliance was "going begging for scraps" when they could make the stuff themselves and know what went into it[1].
Needless to say, the population of Greater Deregulation Lower North West were dying by the thousands. The Administrivia boards did what they could, fudging the numbers and telling coroners to avoid mentioning the disease at all in their paperwork.
Children were pulled from their 'educations' to work in the factories because there weren't enough adults left. The elderly had their "forced retirement injections[2]" delayed so they could work until they dropped.
But the executives were safe. They had made sure to receive the covert treatments from the Alliance that they loudly and vehemently decried to their public.
A public that soon dwindled to next to nothing.
Only then, with their infrastructure crumbling and their economy in a downspin, did they ask for help.
The CRC, forbidden to help at gunpoint, were now less than inclined to do anything. "You wanted survival of the fittest. All your fittest have survived."
"But who's going to work in our factories? Who's going to clean the streets? Who's going to walk our dogs?"
The CRC said, "The fittest."
[1] A lot of very unethical things that favoured the first part of "kill or cure" in case you were wondering.
[2] Euthanasia
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Nosyrevy]
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