Vaccine Heist: The World Needs Vaccine to Combat the Coronavirus Pandemic

Photo from The Buzz Paper

By Chester B Cabalza

Blogger's Notes:
Commentary of an Academic 
(Copyright @ 2020 by Chester B Cabalza. All Rights Reserved).

Caveat! This story is just a figment of my imagination inspired by the worldwide phenomenon series La Casa de Papel (taking off from their successful heist in the Royal Mint of Spain and cliffhanging end at the Bank of Spain). The fiction follows the story on how to find the vaccine for COViD-19! 

PART 1

(Indoor) The professor lectures the gang about the trends on coronavirus pandemic using data science showing to them the number of infections, recoveries and deaths. 

Inside the dark room of an Antonio Gaudi’s look-a-like abode in Barcelona, standing elegantly in his nerdy-looking yet charismatic composure, he holds a laser pointer, directly looking at Lisbon.

Flashes of images of beautiful and ugly scenes on how he has intimately bonded with Oslo, Moscow, Berlin, and Nairobi (all dead) run through his thoughts.

Distracted. Annoyed. Perspiring.

Lisbon: Sergio, what’s going on? (Baffled and concerned).

Professor: China has won the game! (Serious as usual as he pointed on the screen showing the origin of the virus in Wuhan).

He steals a look at Toyko. In her stylish attire, intently eavesdropping to him, her curious mind walks fast through the pandemic events – the Chinese whistle blower physicians who died of the COVID-19 and how they were silenced by the politburo. Different outbreaks that hit the world from 1720 Great Plaque of Marseille, 1820 Cholera, 1920 Spanish Flu, to the 2020 Coronavirus.

There’s a slow sounds of chants of Bella Ciao playing on air while imageries of people wearing of masks, physical distancing, and news reportage on major hit countries from South Korea, Italy, Spain, Iran, Nigeria, Australia, Peru, and the United States are fast forwardly shown on the screen.

The gang’s intense guise upsets neither Manila nor Stockholm. Both of them are listening conscientiously to the professor while he explains the uptrend death toll in the Western World compared to the downtrend in Southeast Asia. 

Manila: Indonesia and the Philippines have more than 200 deaths each and less than a hundred each in Malaysia and Singapore. But the rest of the countries in Southeast Asia have zero fatalities.

Professor: Exactly! Mainly because they are friends with China, or they may have known about the outbreak, beforehand!

Looking at epidemiologic history, Southeast Asians are immune from Chinese, Indian, and Arab diseases through early trading before Portuguese and Spaniards arrived to colonize the region. They may have also shared the same DNA with the people in the Pacific and Madagascar in Africa because of the navigation drive of Austronesians southward!

Denver: That’s absurd, eh! How can you say that in an epidemic? The elderly and adults get infected and are dying! You may get killed on streets in Metro Manila if you disobey the quarantine orders, there’s a lockdown, professor! (Berated wearing a poker face minus his choking laughter).

Professor: I know Denver! 2.6 billion Citizens of planet Earth or one third of the world’s population is living on a global lockdown! Can you imagine India doing that? (He removes his glasses and wipes his teary-eyes).

Stockholm: Italy has more than 16,000 deaths, Spain has more than 13,000, France has more than 8,000, and UK has more than 5,000 as of April 6! These are first world countries. Many of the hard-working health workers in Western and Mediterranean European states are Asians; some of them are from the Philippines!

Denver: And the United States have more than 10,000 death tolls. Can you explain that, professor!? Is it about the presidential election and the Mexican wall?

Bogota: How did that happen? I thought the western world boasts of their sophisticated social medical system? Aren’t they prepared for a pandemic?

Professor: No! Because there’s no vaccine yet!

And the western world may have zero immunity to this novel coronavirus disease!

Angela Merkel pleads the Germans to think of it seriously. The killer enemy is unseen unlike what Europe saw in the two world wars and the Cold War! Boris Johnson suffered the virus and was placed in the ICU, even Prince Charles is positive! Giuseppe Conte, out of disenchantment, welcomed the help of Cuba and China! These are fucking Communist countries!

Bogota: We’re bank robbers and not scientists, professor?!

Helsinki: We may have operated Nairobi inside the Bank of Spain (sad and disgusted), but we’re neither surgeons nor virologists!

Palermo: Professor, ask Marsella he’s an animal rights activist! Right, Marsella? (Everyone laughs in concert while looking at Marsella at the back).

Marcella smirks at Palermo and ignores the joke.

Tokyo: We’re thieves for a cause, professor!

Lisbon: We’re not even experts on a pandemic! (Standing meters away from Sergio to observe physical distancing. The couple are staring at each other, consciously wearing face masks, to contain the transmission of the virus).

Professor: First wave of the outbreak occurred when the novel coronavirus went out from Wuhan and infected many overseas Chinese! The first case of Chinese death happened in the Philippines last February 9.  

Second wave deals on local transmissions in all corners of the world! That’s why we see around the world on how different national governments imposed interventions using enhanced community quarantine! 

Saudi authorities are using heat-sensing drones to monitor people on the streets. Tropical countries are praying that heat wave during the summer season will kill the virus, that's why they extended the quarantine. 

The minimum should be 40 days just like what Venice did during the bubonic plaque. London has the longest lockdown in six months in earlier plaques. Singapore may extend the lockdown until December this year for the survival of the Singaporean gene pool.

It’s still a lockdown just like a martial law! Military and the police will enforce it! Ordinances and emergency laws will be enacted following any typical lockdown!

Look, there are only four countries, mostly islands that are not affected yet by the pandemic!

North Korea shot down their first COVID patient to halt a local transmission against human rights violation. Mongolia isolated the French patient from the rest of the society to stop the spread of the virus and strictly closed borders.

The third wave happens when workers and students who are lockdown for many weeks and more than a month will go back to offices and schools! Many countries will neither flatten the curve nor squash the virus!

Japan and Sweden tried flexible interventions by giving freedom and compromises to their citizens but the virus bounced back even with strict cultural norms on washing of hands, wearing of masks, and physical or social distancing were observed!

Taiwan and New Zealand are doing well but WHO ignored their good practices!

The UN Security Council will call for unity and understanding coz even the organization is vulnerable to save its ass!

Member-countries will stop trusting each other and will wait for further cooperation. That’s a classic Waltzian scenario on anarchic world!

The five permanent members of the Council will ally differently with each other. China and Russia will have a stronger alliance, while the rest of the members will weaken their strengths until autocratic members will disrupt the world order into their favour forming a multipolar or bipolar world!

This is about political leadership!

Irregardless if a government is autocratic or democratic, the virus is merciless, unforgiving and deadly!

Leaders will have to flex responsibly their powers!

National coffers will be drained due to lockdown. It will create a global recession that only well-prepared great powers will dominate the economy in the near future!

Front line workers, mostly from the health sectors will be heralded heroes for their courageous will to combat the disease but politicians will seize every opportunity to show off their leadership style!

Most of them will get sick of the virus! Others will get sick of power!

The world will maintain an organized chaotic system as we will see a gargantuan landscape of power rivalry.

Poor families will go hungry!

The middle class will have the privilege of staying at home, working from home, become obese and bored, but once the lockdown will not be sustained, they will revolt online against abusive leaders!

Few rich families will become philanthropic but most of them will preserve selfishness to save their own interests!

Now, the fourth wave will occur when all the ports around the world will be opened up again. Tourists, diplomats and businessmen will freely travel the world and become carriers of COVID, either they become symptomatic or asymptomatic.

Traditional media will suffer large-scale and will use a pint size warm-bodied courageous personnel to cover the pandemic! They will largely focus on the survival of their own patients and how will local governments respond to the basic needs of their citizens. Without them knowing that an autocratic great power will seize international media; and information warfare will begin to disrupt the system. 

Video conferencing systems will get malwares or electronic viruses and cybersecurity will become a global threat.

Great power rivals will flex muscles and will use the virus as leverage! It will happen, it’s happening now!

Tokyo: What’s the point of all this fuzz, professor? (Recklessly exasperated and bored!)

Is there a World War 3?! Will there be zombies just like in movies?! Is it the Armageddon?!

Should we call the Pope and Dalai Lama?!

How do we solve it professor? (Agitated).

Rio: Many frontline health workers are dying… (Distressed and dismayed).

Lisbon: We need to find the vaccine! Right, professor!

Professor: Eighty percent of tested with mild COVID infections recover. They need self-quarantine, medications, and they can isolate themselves at home. Fifteen percent suffer severe cases where they need to be hospitalized. The doctors will tell them if they need to be confined in the hospital or recuperate at home. Only five percent will be placed in the Intensive Care Units – they will fight for their lives. But most of them will die!

Many of the dying patients are elderly and men. It’s gender-biased. Women will survive well in a pandemic (Looking at directly to the eyes of Lisbon, Tokyo, Stockholm, and Manila. While Palermo and Helsinki meet eye-to-eye to question it).

Everyone will be vulnerable. Our bodies will need this immunity. It’s like herd immunity for evolutionary process! The world is biologically and socially evolving! Our human species is best challenged at the moment to rule the world while Mother Nature regenerates! Even mammals will have to evolve!

Manila: It’s the survival of the fittest! Stronger gene pool wins over those with weaker immunity!  

Tokyo: So, where are we going to steal the vaccine?

Professor: Scientists from China, South Korea, Australia, the US and Europe have already copied blood samples and swabs from coronavirus patients, mild and severe, symptomatic and asymptomatic, just to produce the vaccine!

Scientists are choosing which of the four retroviral medicines for anti-HIV and anti-malaria will be used for the COVID-19! WHO will do sampling test cases and will prescribe the most efficient and affordable drug to become the standard vaccine for all the patients worldwide!

This pandemic will certainly show us a plethora of perspectives on how to solve this doomsday riddle!

We have to look at all the angles in geopolitics, world security, economy, technology, religion, medicine and science!

We will use science!

Lisbon: Science! (and she moves her hands to do a sign of the cross and prays silently).

Professor: We are the Resistance! We need to find the vaccine! Mass produce it to save humanity! 

(TO BE CONTINUED)…