Last night’s new episode of Bull started with Michael Weatherly giving a disclaimer: the episode is a work of fiction. Although it seems to address current health concerns, the episode was written, shot and edited months ago. But Trump disbanded the CDC’s pandemic response team two years ago.
What could possibly go wrong as a result of that? Last night’s Bull episode shows one possible scenario that feels prescient, but that scenario is also a failure of the imagination.
A news anchor, Allison Rojas (Alison Chace) gets a premature birthday card. As soon as she opens it, she and her assistant are sprayed with anthrax powder. Anthrax is a bacteria, while coronavirus is, quite obviously, a virus.
After 9/11, anthrax worries receded to the far background in the national conversation. Even so, there were still anthrax cases around the world. Anthrax research continued in America through President Barack Obama’s presidency, and months into the trainwreck that is the Trump maladministration.
Trump has been obsessed with undoing everything President Obama did, consequences be damned. Destroy the Affordable Care Act? Yeah, sure. But didn’t the CDC pandemic response team get started under a president before President Obama? Doesn’t matter, gotta get rid of it so that the federal government can afford tax cuts for the wealthy.
Understandably, in real life as well as in the backstory of the episode, researchers were upset and concerned over funding cuts to epidemiological research.
In the story, Dr. Natalie Reznick (Brooke Bloom), a microbiologist and anthrax expert, is suspected of sending the anthrax-laced birthday card to Rojas, and another one to Rep. Conors (R? D? -New York? Jonathan Walker).
The congressman gets lots of death threats, but apparently the FBI chose to focus only on Dr. Reznick. She’s upset over the funding cuts, and she was alone in the lab long enough to collect and dry anthrax spores.
Dr. Bull (Weatherly) and his Trial Analysis Corporation (TAC) team are put on the case to defend Dr. Reznick. It doesn’t look good. The jury pool seems to have already made up their minds that Dr. Reznick is guilty. The TAC mirror jurors are inclined to convict.
I’m going to leave it there, I don’t want to be accused of giving out spoilers. Actually, without revealing the outcome of the trial, I’ll tell you how the episode ends. Dr. Bull and lawyer Benny Colón (Freddy Rodriguez) go outside the courthouse and note that life continues normally. There are plenty of people on the streets, none with face masks on.
Episode writer Sarah H. Haught foresaw that Trump’s cuts to the CDC would cause problems. But she failed to imagine that Trump’s incompetence could allow a new epidemic from China to reach America and cause far more cases than either SARS or H1N1, leading to a massive voluntary quarantine.