Field Notes #7: Exposure Archives
- Heather McSharry, PhD
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
In the Margins
There’s a moment in this episode that won’t let go of me. Not the courtroom, not the verdict. It’s the nurse in Louisiana, at home, half-asleep, the familiar weight of someone she’d trusted for a decade at the edge of the bed, and a syringe that looks—on paper—like routine care.
Nothing about it announces itself as attempted murder. By the time her body tells her something's wrong, the only record of that night is her memory, his denial, and what the virus has done inside her.
That’s the part that feels especially After Dark to me: the way infection quietly keeps notes when no one is watching.
When investigators and scientists start to look, they’re not just asking, “Is she infected?” They’re asking, “What did this virus see? Where did it come from?” And suddenly the thing that’s harming her also becomes the thing that can help prove what happened to her.
In this case—and in more and more cases like it—the most important record isn’t on the crime scene. It’s written in blood, in base pairs, in the tiny changes a virus makes every time it copies itself. Whether anyone meant to or not, a history has been recorded.
That’s not unique to this story. Every infection writes something down. Not always in a way that can be read on a phylogenetic tree or admitted into evidence, but as a kind of archive: of which bodies we’ve crossed paths with, which places we’ve moved through, which risks we had the power to refuse and which ones were forced on us.
Some people invite those risks. Some fight like hell to avoid them. Some, like Janice, have them weaponized against them by someone who knows exactly what they’re doing.
The viruses don’t care about that difference. But the records they leave behind do not land in a neutral world.
Underlined
Once you start thinking of infection as record‑keeping, it shows up everywhere:
Biological records
Viral genomes quietly note who they’ve been close to, the way family resemblance shows up in a face.
In this case, Janice’s HIV sequence sat almost on top of another patient’s, hard to explain as coincidence and powerful as supporting evidence.
The same tools map clusters in outbreaks, show where transmission is happening, and sometimes rule people out instead of in. The record can protect.
Paper (and digital) records
Test results, vaccine status, clinic notes, diagnostic codes—all the ways we pin infection to a chart.
On one side, they unlock care: early antivirals, access to trials, proof that an infection came from a clinic and not from someone’s private life.
On the other side, the same fields can gatekeep jobs, insurance, travel, even custody, long after the acute infection is over.
Social records
Stories and labels: “careless,” “careful,” “victim,” “vector,” “did everything right,” “brought it on themselves.”
Refusing a vaccine is not quite the same as consenting to disease, but in the aftermath, the narrative often hardens into blame—especially when vulnerable people die.
Intent matters; a coerced injection is not the same as a bad decision. But the viruses, and the systems that collect their traces, don’t always sort us as neatly as our stories do.
That’s the tension I can’t quite shake: the same records that make a case like Janice’s legible to a court are also the ones that can be turned on people who were never meant to be on trial at all.
What It Points To
We don’t control who reads the records our infections write, but we should pay attention to how those stories are used, and what that use costs.
Outbreak Updates
Updates will only include information verified through credible reporting or official public health sources.
Bottom line: Both outbreaks are unfolding as expected considering the virus transmission dynamics and circumstances of each outbreak. Neither will become pandemics though the Ebola outbreak will be absolutely catastrophic for the region.
Note: I will drop a comprehensive update episode for these outbreaks on May 28, 2026.
Ebola DRC and Uganda
WHO’s latest external situation report (data as of 24 May) reports 906 suspected cases, including 223 suspected deaths, and 105 lab‑confirmed cases with 10 confirmed deaths across 13 health zones in Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu; Uganda has seven confirmed cases and one death, all in Kampala. Transmission is tightly linked to mining and transport corridors where highly mobile miners, displaced people, and porous borders make tracing contacts and isolating cases extremely difficult.
Contact follow‑up is already faltering: DRC has identified 2 231 contacts, but as of 23 May only about 19% had been seen in the previous 24 hours, with insecurity, movement restrictions, and cross‑border mobility all undermining basic outbreak control. There is still no approved vaccine or specific treatment for Bundibugyo virus, so the response depends on classic control measures—early detection and isolation, supportive care, strict infection‑prevention in health facilities, and safe, dignified burials—backed by surge teams and a new continental incident‑management structure linking DRC, Uganda, and neighbors.
Layered on top of this is open conflict: in a statement on 27 May, WHO warned of a “catastrophic collision of disease and conflict” in eastern DRC, with attacks on health facilities, burned treatment tents, and mass displacement pushing exposed people into crowded camps where tracking becomes nearly impossible. Tedros has publicly urged all warring parties to agree to an immediate ceasefire to allow safe, sustained access for medical teams—arguing, bluntly, that “we cannot build community trust or isolate the sick while bombs are falling” and pleading for human survival to be prioritized above everything else.
And to top it off, US citizens who are exposed and/or sick will be sent to Kenya for quarantine/isolation/treatment instead of being brought home. If they trusted our systems to safely manage these patients, they would be bringing them home. An absolute indictment of this HHS under RFKjr.
MV Hondius hantavirus investigation
Health agencies are still monitoring the Andes hantavirus cluster linked to a cruise ship voyage earlier this spring. As of 26 May, ECDC reports 13 cases in total (11 confirmed, two probable) among passengers and crew, with one new case and no new deaths since the previous update; additional cases are possible as former passengers complete the virus’s long incubation period, but the assessed risk to the general public in Europe and the United States remains very low.
Postscript
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It’s been difficult lately to watch outbreaks unfold alongside the steady dismantling of the systems meant to respond to them. There’s a particular kind of grief in knowing many of these consequences are foreseeable—and in some cases preventable—and still watching them happen anyway.
On a less heavy note, I’m looking for new Outbreak After Dark menu inspiration. If you have cocktail, mocktail, snack, or dessert ideas you think belong around the campfire, send them my way.
Also: opinions on Bridgerton? Purely academic reasons for asking.
— Heather
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