As the pandemic of 1918 burnt itself out, and the need for mass graves slowed, police began to bother with crime again. Those firemen who survived were able to cobble together a few skeleton crews, while enough nurses and doctors began to return to work for hospitals to slowly resume operation. Surveying the state of these institutions, a meeting of mayors concluded that civilization had been three weeks from collapse.

(August) Maine Biological Labs fined for illegally importing an avian flu virus in order to develop a vaccine for a private party in Saudi Arabia.

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(August) The quickly moving and rapidly mutating virus attacks Congo; scientists say it had arrived months ago but civil war prevented efforts to contain the disease. Warlords make all conflict mineral zones incubators for the rest of the world, increasing pressure on the U.N. to send troops into these areas to secure them.

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As the pandemic of 2020 burnt itself out, refrigerated trucks were returned to transporting food instead of storing corpses. Seismologist, whose instruments had recorded an earth gone quiet, began to note again the blasting in mines, and the rumble of subways instead of the faint vibrations of heavy equipment digging mass graves. And cities began to return to the din of traffic and police sirens instead of the continual wail of ambulances. Surveying the state of hospitals, a congressional committee concluded that though those in the south, where people refused to get vaccinated, had come within days of collapse, these corporations could not be forced to stockpile additional healthcare supplies or increase their number of beds.

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