An individual who wore a livesuit rather than contract immunoflu flies to a planet suffering from a global plague, evading the quarantine, to try to "prove the plague is a hoax" and that "introducing immunoflu here is what will kill everyone". Needless to say, the moment they removed the suit and got infected with the plague infecting the planet, they learned they would be spending a lot of time in the ICU. -- Lessons
Ignorance is one hell of a drug. Willful ignorance doubly so. An individual just decides on one absolute inviolate truth and refuses to learn different. It has killed thousands. Millions, even[1]. It's about to kill one more.
People will go to any lengths because of a belief they themselves carved in stone. Human Nal, of the Pure Life Aggregate, was fully prepared to die for her cause. If people just stopped using the hideous pollution of the immunoflu and lived clean lives, she reasoned, there would be no more disease. Then all the Mediks and people making more hideous poisons called 'medicine' could relax and only treat injuries.
As far as beliefs went, it was nebulously wholesome. Whilst everyone had the right to proper nutrition, and the CRC fought for everyone to have access to the same[2], not everyone can afford to have those nutrients from natural sources. The fact that everyone can get such things only in theory has passed over Nal and her fellows' heads by a significant margin.
Many among the Aggregate believe that there are only a certain number of diseases. It's generally a multiple or an addition of all known 'evil' numbers, and that total has long since been bypassed. Therefore, through unreasoning illogic, all new diseases are part of a conspiracy.
Pick one. You won't be far off.
Therefore the Screaming Thustules of Pambalarabon was completely fake and Nal was determined to prove it. To protect herself from accidental pollution on the way, she encased herself in the highest-rated livesuit possible and then avoided every single countermeasure stopping her from getting down there.
This, she was certain, was a countermeasure to prevent people like her from exposing the truth. She would have time to learn, before the end.
In the overcrowded waiting rooms full of the sick, she stood on a chair she had brought with her and broadcasted, "Good people of Pambalarabon, don't fall for the administrations' lies! You don't have to suffer their poisons! Just look at what a clean life can do for you!" With that, she breached her suit's integrity and took off her helmet.
One deep breath killed her, but Nal had time to take five before the first symptoms hit her like an Apophis-class asteroid.
It only began with an irritation to the nose and throat. It would spread from there into her bloodstream. Attacking every cell it could along the way.
There's a reason that they called it the Screaming Thustules.
Pambalarabon did indeed see what a clean life could do. Especially the bit about having no defenses against a new pathogen. The least that could be said about the entire spectacle was that she died quickly.
Not nearly quickly enough, because Pambalarabon could not make sufficient painkillers to meet demand.
Her death was not in vain, if only by technicality. It brought into harsh focus the reality of what Pambalarabon was fighting, and redoubled the herculean efforts already underway to conquer it. It also encouraged the reluctant to get their vaccines.
Nal saved a lot of lives with her sacrifice. Just... not how she wanted to.
[1] Simple, moral beliefs are responsible for deaths because a disease was transmitted 'immorally'. Because a disability is the sign of a curse from the devil. Because someone said that a business was involved in sex trafficking through a basement that wasn't there. Inviolate truths should always be treated with the grains of salt, if not the forty-foot barge pole.
[2] Dereggers are the reason why everyone can't have nice things.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / focalpoint]
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