Severance

None. A fever that leaves its victims performing familiar routines until they starve.

Candace keeps commuting to her publishing job through the collapse of civilisation, filing blog posts to an audience that no longer exists, because she cannot conceive of not going. The infected do the same thing, more honestly.

Assigned meaning — A system hands you a purpose, and it is sufficient.

No relation to the television series with the same title, published four years later. The two arrive at the same thesis from opposite directions and neither references the other.