My biggest fear surrounding Covid-19 is not the illness itself but the vaccine that is being rushed through testing, right this very moment. I've no doubt that this synthetic gumbo will be forced upon us, one way or another. I don't think we'll be injected at gunpoint(although I wouldn't put it past them) but I am certain there will be severe consequences if we don't roll up our sleeves and submit.
For me, vaccines are a strange one. On one hand I can see the obvious benefits, but, like always, where there is profit there will always be corruption and when it comes to medicine cutting corners can have devastating effects. Usually a vaccine would take, on average, 10-years to develop after going through various stages of testing, but it seems all these safeguarding protocols have been circumnavigated in order to save the world from coronavirus.
Earlier today I happened to tune in to a BBC4 radio broadcast titled;
The race is on for the world's scientists to develop a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine. The Inquiry examines how quickly this can be done and what hurdles need to be overcome to roll out a vaccine in 12-18 months, rather than the many years it would normally take.
Presented by Kavita Puri.
The broadcast begins with some eerie instrumental reminiscent of tubular bells, which I'm pretty sure is the soundtrack to horror movie, Jason. After a few seconds the presenter, Kavita Puri, opens with a dramatic description of a scientist who is working on a vaccine to fight Covid-19. She continues, telling how the world has been "brought to its knees" by Covid-19 and then begins interviewing the first of four experts. This 25-minute long investigation has been split into 4 parts with each part interviewing a different scientist/doctor.
Part 1 - The Valley of Death
Annelies Wilder-Smith, Prof of emerging infectious diseases at London school of hygiene and tropical medicine, is the first expert to be interviewed by Kavita Puri. Annelies begins by describing the stages a new vaccine must go through before being sold to the public. She explains that first of all the vaccine goes through preclinical trials, involving laboratory tests on animals. If these are successful the vaccine then goes on to human testing consisting of 3 phases.
Phase 1 involves the vaccine being tested on a small group, normally around 50 people.
Phase 2 begins testing on a larger group of people. Scientist are looking at how our antibodies react to the vaccine and to what extent.
phase 3 involves mass testing of around 20,000 to 30,000 people.
Because so many vaccines fail somewhere along this route it is referred to as "The valley of death".
When a vaccine passed all of this testing the company who produced it can then apply for a licence. After a licence is granted the product can be sold on the open market. According to Annelies, this process usually takes around 10-years to complete.
Kavita then asks the scientist; "Given how there is all this political will, there is no way, is there, that these phases can be fast-tracked?"
Annelies - "I think they are already fast-tracking as much as they can. There needs to be a good balance between speed and safety. "A perfect example of how fast-tracking can go wrong is the 1976 swine flu vaccine. America's president signed off a new vaccine for swine flu, one that had been rushed through testing. Only after it was administered to the general public did it become apparent that the vaccine caused a paralyzing side effect known as Guillain-Barre syndrome. This dreadful side-effect was missed during testing because phase 3 didn't include a large enough group of people."
(By the way, we will come back to the subject of this Swine flu vaccine in part-3, so please don't forget about what you've just read...)
Annelies states that only one company(Moderna Therapeutics) has, so far, gotten a vaccine through to human testing phase 1. In this BBC interview nothing else was mentioned about Moderna so I thought I would look them up myself...I'll let you make your own minds up, but given what we've just heard about fast-tracking the following information is far from reassuring...
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — At first glance, Moderna Therapeutics looks like the most enviable biotech startup in the world. It has smashed fundraising records and teamed up with pharmaceutical giants as it pursues a radical plan to revolutionize medicine by transforming human cells into drug factories. But the reality is more complicated. A STAT investigation found that the company’s caustic work environment has for years driven away top talent and that behind its obsession with secrecy, there are signs Moderna has run into roadblocks with its most ambitious projects.
Part 2 - Ethicacy
According to Wikipedia, ethicacy in medicine has the following meaning;
In medicine, efficacy is the capacity for beneficial change (or therapeutic effect) of a given intervention (for example a drug, medical device, surgical procedure, or a public health intervention)
In part 2 Kavita interviews Doctor Sarah Coby, Associate Professor of ecology in evolution at the university of Chicago.
After the introducing, doctor Sarah gives an explanation of ethicacy and then enthusiastically describes the atmosphere she is presently working in;
Doctor Sarah - "I've never seen anything this urgent or coordinated. It's quite possible that some of the vaccines are going to be winnowed at this time, because either they are stimulating some kind of adverse response(side effect) or that they are not inducing a sufficient protective response. It's hard to know which horse to bet on at this point."