Chapter 20

On the 27th of May the country opened up. The border opened, but required all people entering to quarantine for two weeks, with every other day testing. They had to stay in specific hotels around the borders of the country where all the staff had been vaccinated. Only Geneva was allowing international flights. We had a stock of about a million doses left, it had taken 2 million to bring the virus to a halt.

I also got a visit from two of the Swiss Federal Council. They were torn because they were dealing with demands for the vaccine from everyone around the world, while at the same time they were elated to have the lockdown lifted.

“M Barkley, Switzerland wishes to honor what you have done for the country. What may we do for you?” the woman asked in a soft french accent.

“I’d love official Swiss citizenship, while I have received status as a permanent resident as a business owner, citizenship is going to take decades or more. There are several plans I’d also like to discuss with you. Do you have a few minutes to see some of what we are proposing?”

“Citizenship is a reasonable request for the hero of Switzerland,” the man said.

“Yes, please show us your proposals,” the woman agreed.

I walked them to a conference room where Thomas, Mike, and Big T were ready to coordinate a presentation on an Alp based solar power plant. They went through the locations, potential generation capacities, and our most outlandish idea, a new pumped storage battery built into the mountain valleys west of Gimmelwald.

I finished the presentation, “I’m currently expanding production, each solar panel factory can produce a generating capacity of 2.2 gigawatt hours a year. Ten factories can replace all the current nuclear powerplants annual generation in just 12 years. Switzerland can be the world’s first, first world, carbon neutral country in as little as three years, and the complete phase out of nuclear in less than 20.

“Part of that solution is this,” I said, placing a round cylinder on the table. “A manufacturing partner has developed this supercapacitor using our graphene. This cell recharges as quickly as three seconds, and holds enough power for a modern electric vehicle to go fifteen miles. That’s an energy density by weight, four times that of petrol, with an engine operating at 30% efficiency.

“This is just the beginning of the graphene revolution to come, while every square meter of graphene that comes out of the production plant is sourced directly from atmospheric carbon, making it a carbon negative industrial and commercial product. Who knows what amazing products are just waiting to be created next, every time I build a new production plant, the price for graphene will drop, as supply meets demand. With your support, Switzerland will be the world’s production center for graphene.

“Companies will establish themselves here, for the access to the materials and products available here, research institutions will come here to study potential uses of this super material. This is the beginning of a revolution centered on Switzerland as it becomes the production center of a material that the whole world demands.”

Everyone clapped at the end of my speech. The two from the Council thanked me again for the promising outlook on the future, and she agreed that she would do everything she could do to ensure that I and my company stayed in Switzerland. I thanked her for her visit.

The 2,020 machines were going to crank out 111,000 new doses today. We were concentrating on our neighbors, trying to decide which country was willing to go into total lockdown for the three weeks required to get the virus under control with the proven surround and isolate method. The antivirus made eliminating the virus easier, but the surround and isolate method would work without it. Lichtenstein had joined in during the Switzerland eradication, so the neighbors that remained were France, Germany, Italy, and Austria. It was too much responsibility for one company, so with the help of my new friends in the Federal Council, the World Health Organization outlined a plan, and took responsibility for not only picking the next target in Europe, but requiring the countries to follow the plan exactly.

Austria had a population small enough, and most cases were in one small part of the country, so they sent the available 1 million doses there. The country had encouraged everyone to go stock up for three weeks of sheltering in place, then it locked down tight. The same inoculation program as before, starting with essential services, and hot spots. With everyone staying home, the only people out were grocery delivery, police, and other essential services.

By the time it was over it had taken 1.5 million doses, but there was a new stockpile of 2.3 million doses remaining. Seeing that isolation really did work, Germany had gone under a stronger lockdown a week into Austria’s. They lifted the lock down one day a week for people to get supplies, but otherwise the country ground to a halt. They really wanted to be vaccinated next, but they were the most populous country in Europe, and their daily infection rate was still in the thousands, but finally dropping.

Italy and France were trying to do the same, Italy was doing the best though, having gotten their infection rate down under a half percent growth per day, and most days well under that. They tightened the lockdown, and the vaccine shipped. It took all the vaccine we had, plus the three million doses produced during those three weeks. WHO learned the lesson, big countries with large infected populations needed significantly more doses available at the beginning.

They concentrated on the Netherlands, Belgium, and Denmark together, with the same three week plan, and on June 1st I upped my production of machines to 50 per day, and Donald started looking for a second production building because no one else had figured out a vaccine yet.

That was fast enough that WHO could tackle France, who’s lockdown efforts had been anemic up to that point, but at the last minute, they moved onto Spain and Portugal instead. They were so happy to jump the queue that police were the only ones in the street for three weeks. There were sufficient doses left over that they moved straight onto Poland one week into the Spanish eradication program. And one week into that the Czech eradication program began concurrently with Norway, Sweden, and Finland.