Vaccine Heist (Part 2): The Quest for Coronavirus Vaccine Begins

Photo from The Guardian

By Chester B Cabalza

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

Caveat! Just like in Part 1, the fiction comes from the figment of my imagination. The story takes off after the professor gathers his gang as they unlock mysteries behind the making of vaccines. Calling the shots of Resistance, the brilliant Sergio Marquina sends them off to major global cities to find the cure and halt the coronavirus pandemic as the WHO launched the coordinated “Solidarity Trial” in 10 countries around five continents.

Part 2

(Outdoor) Across the vastness of the South China Sea, Tokyo and Lisbon scuba dive like mermaids in full battle gear. They survive the marine extremes beneath the ocean. Crossing the threshold of Liaoning’s hull, China’s largest combat aircraft battleship and symbol of naval dominance in the world’s busiest sea lane.

From the weather deck bossing the ship’s forecastle, birds hurl quickly in remote air; gracefully it flap wings to the horizon. The king sun makes way for its dramatic exit in a grotesque sunset shimmer as the warship wallops the salty body of water and keeps buoyancy in the deep blue sea.

Tokyo carefully throws the antiretroviral drug to Lisbon (a survivor of the COVID disease herself in Madrid). 

Tokyo: Inject it in your body! (She whispers to her. Lisbon keeps mum and paranoid).

They run and hide near the aircraft carriers. Sailors from the People’s Liberation Army Navy deploy a drone and force feed radio frequency identification around the missiles.  

A Chengdu J-20 Chinese fighter jet deplanes. Gandia arrives in full personal protective equipment (PPE) in red jumpsuit wearing a realistic Salvador Dali mask, accompanied by three biogenetically cyborg assassins, chemically brainwashed, and genetically immune by a tailored virus. Cyborg assassins can’t be infected by the coronavirus.

Professor: Don’t you shoot Gandia! He’s on our side! (Talking to the combative ladies using satellite phone patch from his distant hollow).

Lisbon: Sergio, how can we trust him? (Worried of treachery).

Professor: Just trust me! (he sighs in deep breath). Bogota and Denver injected convalescent plasma to Gandia after you recovered from COVID. Your blood contains antibodies to fight the virus. Antibodies are found in the plasma.

Tokyo: Very well! How sure are you that your woman Lisbon is safe here? Are we safe here? I’m used to bank robberies and battles, eh! But not like this one. The virus is unseen, professor! (her temperament explodes like the intensity and stealth of a cat fighter).

You told us what happened in the USS Roosevelt; almost all of the American sailors were asymptomatically infected by the virus! It’s contagious! What shall we do now? Did they find a vaccine yet in Washington?

Lisbon: Gandia can get exposed again to the virus, even if we both recovered from COVID (voice cracking).

Professor: Listen (he tries to calm the two). China solely manufactures Carrimycin tablets, a possible cure for COVID-19-2020.

But Gandia will take the clinical trials for favipivar. Billions of doses are now mass-produced in Wuhan and Shenzhen, after the drug had undergone clinical trials.

Come to think of it ladies, there are 58 candidate drugs for antibodies, 22 for antivirals, 14 for cell-based compound, five for RNA-based compounds, 15 for scanning compounds to be repurposed, and various other therapy categories for anti-inflammatory, antimalarial, interferon, protein-based, antibiotics, and receptor-modulating compounds. 

How can you not take the chances if there are other 66 candidate drugs? Imagine all the 249 compounds our scientists and military physicians are doing today. The world is developing 115 vaccine candidates; let’s not lose this momentum, ladies.

Don’t leave Gandia inside the Liaoning! That’s the safest passage to reach Shanghai and Beijing because of the lockdown! Medicines are needed to be shipped across the world. Make sure that the warship carrier is safe and gets the right of passage once you reach the Horn of Africa and Panama Canal.

Tokyo: Where are the other members of the team?

Professor: I sent them to biotechnology firms and universities. Manila and Denver are in India. Helsinki and Palermo went to Germany. Rio just reached Italy while Stockholm has seen the mass grave in Brazil. Arturo talked to the CIA in New York while Marcella is talking to Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand.  

Tokyo: Make sure we’re all safe, professor! I hope no one from the team will die this time! (Staring at Lisbon, agitated and sharp).

Professor: (Listening in silence. Deep thinking. Mind wanders. Afraid...so afraid)

***

(Indoor) The gang seriously listens to the professor as he vividly lectures on smallpox vaccine discovered by British physician Dr. Edward Jenner.

In the flashback, all of the dead characters are alive sharing their thoughts with robber colleagues (Oslo, Berlin, Moscow, and Nairobi are seated while observing physical distancing inside the chamber).

Berlin walks beside the professor and starts discussing about immunization.

Berlin: (always candid and charismatic especially when he sneers to the team). Dr. Jenner’s work is considered as the foundation of immunology (showing his old photo from the screen). His vaccine killed the smallpox, the only infectious disease to have naturally been eradicated in human history.

Professor: But evil nations will always use infectious diseases for its advantage as a bioterror weapon, remember that!

Rio: Professor, how was smallpox treated at that time?

Professor: Quarantine, vaccination, and people burned all infected clothes and bedding. Those interventions helped the world flatten the epidemic curve. It was thought as an airborne contagious disease that governments panicked in controlling the spread of smallpox. Separate wards in hospitals were built solely for the terminal virus, killing an estimated 300 million people.

Stockholm: Oh, that’s a lot! I pray that COVID pandemic will not kill that much, professor.

Nairobi: Ladies, did you know that the term vaccine (vaccinum) was derived from the Latin word for cow (vacca)? That’s how it reflects the origins of smallpox vaccination. Is it right professor? (amused pleasantly as the crowd gives her a round of applause with her trivial opinion).

Professor: You’re right, senora Nairobi! (he returns the sugary smile at her).

But that’s a misnomer for sure. It’s because the vaccine used to prevent smallpox was likely a horsepox, not cowpox.

Dr. Edward Jenner observed that milkmaids who had gotten cowpox did not show any symptoms of smallpox after variolation or inoculation.

Actually, he infected a young boy with cowpox, but later when he injected the child with the deadly smallpox virus, he did not get sick. It was an accidental mistake that cured the boy. That beautiful mistake cured everybody with smallpox around the world!

Nairobi: Our son would be a genius, professor! If only… (she recalls her offer to him of an artificial insemination while Inspector Raquel smiles at them and sobs in sorrow of Nairobi’s loss).

Manila: Eh professor, how much time did they discover the vaccine for smallpox?

Palermo: The history of smallpox extends into pre-history. The disease likely emerged in human populations about 10,000 BC. The earliest credible evidence of smallpox is found in the Egyptian mummies of people who died some 3000 years ago (looking at Helsinki, trying to impress him).

Professor: That’s right, Palermo…and (trying to expound the facts when Berlin rebuts).

Berlin: Yes, smallpox has existed for at least 3,000 years and was one of the world's most feared diseases until it was eradicated by a collaborative global vaccination programme. The last known natural case was in Somalia in 1977.

Moscow: But China and India practiced smallpox inoculation even before the discovery of vaccination?

Professor: Very well, Moscow.  That’s a method for the prevention of smallpox by deliberate introduction of material from smallpox pustules into the skin. This generally produced a less severe infection than naturally-acquired smallpox, but still induced immunity to it.

Just like in COVID now, countries use various kinds of method. States that experienced relative diseases on SARS, MIERS-COV, and Ebola virus are better off in their medical practice and herd immunity compared with nations that have less exposure on the coronavirus. It’s a novel disease. Still, we’re figuring it out whether or not it’s a natural virus…

Manila: Professor, you didn’t answer me. How much time before Dr. Jenner discovered the vaccine?

In the Philippines, the government is giving away 50 million pesos as a bounty to the discoverer of the vaccine - they got virgin coconut oil and other alternative medicine. Other countries are doing the same thing, giving away prizes to bright ideas. We don’t need to rob banks anymore if we happen to discover the vaccine.

Professor: There’s no vaccine yet for COVID, Manila! (his voice sounds in anguish).  

Dr. Jenner’s method underwent medical and technological changes over the next 200 years, and eventually resulted in the eradication of smallpox.

Everyone’s racing for the vaccine. This isn’t about the Nobel Peace Prize for science and medicine. Scientists and physicians need different stages of clinical trial to do that. The experiment has to undergo phases of test from small, to medium to large clinical testing. Once approved then the drug gets certified to be used by everyone. It should be feasible and mass produced to kill enough the coronavirus. 

It took the world two centuries before the smallpox disease was naturally eradicated through a vaccine!

If our generation won’t survive the plague, perhaps the next generation will outlive it. We see herd immunity with rising recoveries. That’s good! Scientific data would show us that with strict quarantine and lockdown, we flatten and squash the virus, though the contagion keeps on mutating.  

Just like in a flu that can be healed but can’t be cured! Recurring as we see it. There's no cure for the flu, but there are available natural ways to ease the symptoms. It can’t because there are drugs that inhibit one of the enzymes that the virus uses to get into and out of cells.

Right now, there are potential post-infection therapies for COVID-19-20. These are favipiravir, lopinavir, hydroxychoroquine or chloroquine. All are in final stage of human testing before it reaches the fourth phase of manufacturing! Although there are also individual or combined drugs such as lopinavir-ritonavir combined, lopinavir-ritonavir combined with interferon-beta, remdesivir, and hydroxychloroquine done in separate trials.

We’re running out of time ladies and gents! This quest for vaccine can become our exit strategy. Making sure that the vaccine is safe by undergoing rigorous testing that should result to harmless consequences. It takes 10 years to do clinical trials for a vaccine but scientists are racing to discover it for months, unless hundreds of millions of people will die if we don’t do something now! It took two centuries to perfect smallpox vaccine.

***

(Outdoor) Denver and Manila arrive in Mumbai in spite of a national lockdown around India, the largest sub-continent nation to do so. Inside one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.

Manila: Hydroxychloroquine, they say this anti-malarial drugs is a game-changer drug in the fight against coronavirus. The miracle drug? By the way, how can we convince India to make a surplus when the rest of the world is still suffering from the pandemic?

Denver: Let’s do what professor has told us to do. Just prepare billions of Indian rupees! I trust your negotiation skills, Manila!

Professor: Denver, do you hear me? (He’s calling them from the satellite network).

Inspector Sierra is arriving shortly to help you negotiate and get the drugs manufactured! Do you copy?

TO BE CONTINUED>>>