Plotline for a novel/screenplay
In a not too distant future America, the NIH has been privatized and largely works on high profit potential projects such as ED and Feel Better drugs.
Decent interventional medicine still exists in the suburban rings around major cities but in rural and inner city areas has been replaced by Amway Health Stores where "consumers" can purchase supplements to treat their maladies- or buy them from their neighbors who are distributors..
One day, large numbers of children in a charter elementary school in Dallas suddenly develop high fevers and within days most are dead. Over the coming days, the mystery disease pops up in suburbs across the country as air travelers return home and quickly spreads to urban and rural areas.
All travel is halted and the financial economy collapses. Essential services increasingly go dark.
In an emergency meeting, the New Zealand cabinet votes to deny landing to the flock of private jets carrying global elites who have prepared survival compounds there. The pilots attempt to make it to Australia but are met with the same- they run out of fuel and plunge into the sea. Two that try to land anyway are shot down well offshore.
A few people are isolated enough that they are not infected and approximately 1 in 20 survives and carries immunity.
Meanwhile in the midst of the chaos, one government researcher becomes aware that Native American populations are virtually unaffected.......
