The Esper was named Jiro.
(bolding mine)
It just occured to me - Papa Scientist somehow caused the mutations, but in an inexact way, ehich is why he wasn’t sure where the subjects were; OR Papa knew patient zero and lost track of him and these oddities coming to light told him “zero” moved around a lot. Perhaps Papa was somehow aware of these folks psychically (hence the individual folders) and Junior has yet to develope his powers
I just thought of something: what if MiB is a sadistic tease and that’s why he didn’t kill Junior in the cab
One of the powers might be the ability to activate powers in others. Maybe that is patient zero?
Behold the power of… Guidance Counselor Man!
you owe me a new keyboard! 
It would be kinda cool if Junior is the “Professor X” of the bunch, and his power is somehow the ability to find everyone & bring them together. He didn’t immediately ping on Nurse Guy, but maybe you’re right and his own powers haven’t developed yet.
But did dad cause this whole thing, or he just became aware of it? I can’t wait to find out more.
I think people are overanalyzing the bit about the characters being linked. This doesn’t mean that they are carrying some kind of spreading disease. It’s simply something that all shows do to make things interesting (yet, less realistic).
If all of the characters were totally seperate and never met up with eachother than it would be kind of hard to create meaningful plotlines for the show, wouldn’t it?
It’s possible that the powers come from some kind of shared experience or contact with eachother, but simply seeing them run into eachother often doesn’t mean anything.