31/31 - DAY 6 - CHARLOTTE ROACH, CONTAGIOUS HYPOCHONDRIAC

“Actually, I saw this thing on Facebook that said that dogs are spreading it, too, and it said that you can get sick from their fur and their saliva and they’re asymptomatic… Oh my god, do you own pets? Is that dog fur on your jacket?!” 

Charlotte Roach is a sickly 40 year old woman with cropped blonde hair and a perpetual faint, grayish tint to her skin. She is CONFIDENT IN HER BELIEFS, ADDICTED TO SOCIAL MEDIA, and ANXIOUS. She unknowingly has the psychic ability to project her hypochondria onto others, causing them to experience the illness as she understands it. 

Raised in a neglectful household, Charlotte nearly died from preventable illnesses when she was a child. After social services placed her in foster care, she recovered and, once she was an adult, was perfectly healthy. She does not believe she has ever fully recovered, however, and is frequently anxious about dying of the latest dangerous sickness. Her local hospital’s emergency department is on a first-name basis with her. She spends her time outside of work looking for jobs, as she is on unemployment - she has difficulty keeping a job because she constantly calls out sick. 

Charlotte spends a lot of her time on social media, reading articles and watching videos full of misinformation about current events. With the current pandemic being widely reported, as with past health crises such as H1N1 and Ebola, a lot of news about it shows up on Charlotte’s feed, stoking her fears. She will begin to get worked up and will have an anxiety attack, unwittingly inducing symptoms of the disease she’s afraid of (according to her perceptions) in people around her, especially those who tell her that she’s overreacting.

When Charlotte has an anxiety attack, she will begin to experience psychosomatic symptoms of the disease she is afraid of. Anyone who is nearby will experience symptoms of the real disease until she feels as though she’s recovered from the illness. During the Ebola outbreak, this included the bleeding in the eyes and GI tract, particularly because Charlotte saw so much reported about it. People affected by her power are not contagious. 

Trying to convince her that she is faking it or that she is hysterical will not allay her fears. The efficacy of treatment for the psychically-induced illness varies - treatments to ease symptoms typically work well, however antibiotics and other treatments targeting the supposed cause of the symptoms do not have any beneficial effect. Once Charlotte feels healthy again, the people affected by her power will no longer feel any adverse effects.