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Pandemic Journal Entries:

January 12th

Before this pandemic blows over, and everyone realizes what they did wrong, I’d like to catalog

what happened or the most notable parts. So, at the start we just received news broadcasts,

and amber alerts indicating a deadly pathogen was sweeping across the world. Then people

fear mongered solutions like: eating a specific product from a company, washing your hands

with holy water, destroying 5g cell towers, and so on. I heard about an absolutely insane person

who suggested we nuke other countries, and the craziest part was he is on the legislation

board! Anyway, Symptoms would appear immediately after contact with an infected host.

Infected hosts are relatively easy to spot, they exhibited the following physical attributes, they

have scarred and decaying skin, which is covered with blood boils and swelling tissue, they have

also had higher muscle definition, and longer nails. In an inactive state they can observed lying

down in dark and cold places, making them more active at night. However once provoked they

unleash multiple aggressive attacks that can range from running, throwing infected material

(bad perception of distance), biting, and clawing at healthy and otherwise uninfected

individuals. The initial symptoms upon infection were a fever, chills, nausea, and shortness of

breath. And over the course of a couple of hours symptoms would worsen into muscle stiffness,

seizures, un-responsiveness to communication. It really sucks how this thing gets you. I

remember in the beginning people, well at least in my area were good about following

guidelines set forth by the CDC. They followed distancing procedures, wearing masks, and

gloves, and inventory purchasing quotas. Not only that but my neighborhood even started a
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group chat, to help people out if they needed help. Now fast forward around 2 months from

the outbreak, its August, and since my neighborhood is primarily populated with good hearted

old folks, when the outbreak reached our little town, and someone got sick. And a person went

to go and check on them, they then got infected, or at least that’s how the more controlled

infection cases happen. And now our neighborhood has been reduced by around 45%. I want to

make something clear though, it wasn’t the virus directly that killed all 45% of those people, it

was dumb decisions on behalf of the managers in our community. And crazed revolution

leaders. See only around 5% of the population got infected initially, and we knew since we

regularly updated the group chat on infected, and infection symptoms. We knew who was sick,

with what, and where they were. Well on the outside of our neighborhood about 3 houses

down from me, a father of 3 children fell ill with something, no one wanted to think he got the

virus. But we had to take proactive measures, we sealed him in his garage, gave him some

Zoloft, and painkillers, and would send someone in to give him food, and update us on his

situation. Oh yeah, I should mention this too, some people do recover from what I’ve heard

they just exhibit symptoms similar to a completely infected individual, it just takes like 4 days to

recover from the symptoms. Well on the 1st day he was going through it, he had a fever and all

the symptoms, he kept asking for his kids. And it was very very difficult to say no not yet. On

the next day he wouldn’t even eat, we had to spoon feed this guy, like he was baby again. Since

he made it to the second day without turning into a zombie, we just assumed he was going to

be alright. Even the managers began to celebrate early. By the third day we found it he didn’t

make it, and not only that but he had gone missing. And after a brief investigation we found out

that someone let him out of the garage. But we didn’t know where he went, well we didn’t
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have to search for very long because in a few days we found he had completely turned into a

zombie. This was because he broke into a frenzy one night and got everyone in this one house

infected. They had to put him down out of self and community preservation, it sucks he was a

great guy. And since we didn’t know how to deal with the new situation due to a lack of

stopping power. We had to just seal anyone who got infected inside of that house. 2 people

recovered, and the rest of the people were sealed away completely infected inside of this

house. Well one day I got approached by someone saying that he started a group that was

going to invade that house, and eliminate the threat, while retrieving resources from the house.

I said, “*tssh*, whatever man, how many people did you convince to follow you on this?”. He

said he got 12 people, and they are ready to start a revolution, since management doesn’t

listen, and he was sure he would be a better leader. After taking my humanities class and being

in several history classes I knew it was time to move. I thought I shouldn’t make a scene

because this guy has lost his mind. But I should inform the management, well I did, and they

played it as a false threat. I knew if me and my family moved further south, we could potentially

bunk with some people who live against the wall that borders the highway, on a dead end. That

means no threat from that direction. Well 2 nights later the worse happened, this guy invaded

the infected zone, and him with the 7 followers he had, not 12 all got infected. And then those

completely infected zombies started rampaging into the neighborhood, biting, and clawing at

anyone they could hear. See after hearing gunshots everyone started losing their minds, and

screaming, and running from house to house, attracting the zombies to them. I stayed in the

basement of the house on the dead end, during the breakout. The people there were nice

enough to let us stay, well after I bribed them with more resources and taking on some of their
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chores. These people suck we are in a pandemic, and I lost my house, yet I still must beg people

to show me the mercy I would show them under no circumstance. Anyway, the breakout

ended after this guy in a truck lured them away from our neighborhood. We’ve now filed a

police report, and can expect contact with multiple authorities on behalf of the government.

But they only showed up like a week later, after the infected had dispersed. Also, the guy in the

truck managed to come back uninfected, he said he ditched the truck and bicycled back. I

thought he was brave. Now we had lost 45% of our neighborhood, and 2 of the 5 managers to

the infected. Along with resources stored in the houses. Now a weeks ago, the government

announces they are making significant advances in their research to uncover a cure, and we can

expect one within the end of next year. Even as I’m writing this I want to get out of this

community, but if I leave now then I’m going to get blacklisted from every other community,

and now we are so close to the end. I just must hold at max another year. Hopefully, no one

does anything dumb until then, or I don’t get kicked out. On several occasions I’ve heard people

mumbling about having a task force that recovers resources from infected zones. And to be

honest I’d rather me and my family get blacklisted then have anyone one on my family be

picked for their “task force”. Now I’m going to keep updating this journal as things get better or

worse, But one thing is for sure it feels like the sun is on the horizon with the announcement of

the cure.
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I hope you enjoyed reading this survivor journal and thank you for teaching me about the

humanities!

-Best Regards, Javier Gallardo