“Somewhere in the world, the wrong pig met up with the wrong bat.”
Here, Dr. Erin Mears describes the way that unusual viruses develop, with an unnatural but random interaction between two species.
"Godzilla, King Kong, Frankenstein, all in one."
Alan Krumwiede approaches Dr. Sussman out of nowhere in public, and this is how he describes the virus, comparing the fear it conjures to that of famous movie monsters.
"It's figuring us out faster than we're figuring it out."
Dr. Ally Hextall is committed to learning more about the virus and finding a vaccine, but she faces many obstacles along the way. Here, she describes the fact that the virus is changing and "learning" faster than the epidemiologists are, which is preventing them from getting closer to finding solutions.
"Why can't they invent a shot that keeps time from passing?"
Mitch's daughter, Jory, bemoans the fact that time is passing while they are quarantined, which means that her youth is being taken away from her by the virus. Jory is in high school, and is not only traumatized by the loss and the fear that has accompanied the pandemic, but also by the fact that she is losing precious time as a teenager.
"We just need to make sure that nobody knows until everybody knows."
Haggerty is the head of Homeland Security, and as such, is committed to maintaining the peace in the country. Here, he stresses the importance of not letting the news about the virus out too soon, lest it stir panic.
"Dr. Cheever, I think I'm sick."
After being in Minneapolis for a short amount of time, Erin Mears has the frightening realization that she herself has contracted the virus. She has been extremely brave in working to find answers about the virus, but her bravery has not protected her from being vulnerable to the disease herself. It is a tragic revelation, and a moment that foreshadows her eventual death.
"The average person touches their face three to five times every waking minute. In between, we're touching door knobs, water fountains and each other."
Here, Mears discusses one of the most alarming elements of the pandemic, that it is exceedingly transmissible because of the fact that humans are so tactile.
"Uh…before we were married, my…my wife had a relationship with a man in Chicago named John Neal."
Mitch says this in an awkward exchange with Dr. Mears. She is trying to figure out if Beth came in contact with anyone else before returning to her home in Minneapolis, and suspects that she maybe stopped to have an affair with someone on her way home. Here, Mitch reveals that Beth was previously in a relationship, a clue to whether or not she could have spread the disease further than initially believed.
"If we even had a viable vaccine right now, we would still have to do human trials and that would take weeks. And then we would have to get clearance and approval, figure out manufacturing and distribution. That would take months. And then train survivors to give inoculations, more months, more deaths."
Here, Hextall expresses some dismay about how long finding any relief is going to take. Cheever wants to know if the vaccine is close to being finished, but Hextall gives him the sobering news that any relief will take much longer than he and Haggerty have hoped.
"Forsythia is a lie. It’s a lie and you made four and a half million dollars for telling it. You wanna blog about that? You are going to go away, Mr. Krumwiede, and so is all your money. Hell, I can’t even imagine all the civil suits people are gonna file against you and I have a pretty good imagination. And now you wanna tell people not to get vaccinated, when that’s the best chance they’ve got. If I could throw your computer in jail, I would."
Here, a government official, Dennis French, tells Krumwiede that they have proven that his forsythia remedy is a complete fraud and that he will be punished for it.
