On Friday, President Trump announced Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership to develop a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year if possible. He put two “can-do” people in charge of the process – Glaxo Smith Kline’s vaccine expert Mancef Slaoui to oversee vaccine development and Army General Gus Perna to oversee logistics.

Not only will they facilitate testing of the available vaccines, but they will also arrange production of promising vaccines even before they have been approved. In contrast, during  President Obama’s Swine Flu (H1N1) epidemic, the CDC got vaccines approved quickly (just 7 weeks after Phase 1 clinical trials began), but then a shortage ensued while the vaccines were being produced.

Taking Vaccines out of Fauci’s Hands

President Trump just took the power to slow-walk vaccines out of the hands of Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of NIAID (one of the institutes of the NIH). When the first COVID-19 vaccine, the Inovio vaccine, was ready for clinical testing, Fauci buried it in a year-long Phase 1 clinical trial which began in April 2020 and is not scheduled to end until April 2021. (Fortunately, Fauci never got control over Bill Gates’s Moderna vaccine, which is making rapid progress, having already completed its Phase 1 clinical trial.)

President Trump officially announced Operation Warp Speed in the White House Rose Garden. Fauci stood behind him with hands folded in front of him (at the 24:00 mark) while Trump was saying, “And we hope to be able to do something by the end of the year, or shortly thereafter.”

Just three days earlier at a Senate hearing, Fauci had reiterated his claim that no vaccine could possibly be completed in less than a year to 18 months, even though in an earlier interview with Samantha Guthrie on the Today show Fauci had admitted that the coming Operation Warp Speed could get a vaccine out sooner.

Operation Warp Speed is a totally brilliant political move by Trump. He put a “can-do” leader in charge of vaccines, and “can’t-do” Fauci can’t object. Trump’s primary goal is to open up the economy ASAP. Firing Fauci would have hurt that effort. Trump has figured out how to neutralize Fauci’s obstructions without firing him.

The “No Successful Coronavirus Vaccine” Myth

Americans have been played by the “no successful coronavirus vaccine” myth in order to justify Fauci’s slow-walking of vaccines. That myth is not true as Israel’s Migal Laboratory has created a poultry coronavirus vaccine that has been tested with and works with chickens.

But, as with every myth, there is an element of truth. The original vaccines that were developed to fight the SARS coronavirus epidemic of 2002-2003 all caused Vaccine Enhanced Disease (VED) in mice and monkeys. When a certain type of aged mice were vaccinated and then exposed to the SARS virus, they would gain the needed antibodies but would experience cytokine storms if exposed to the virus.

Scientists knew that something in the vaccine produced the cytokine storm. It couldn’t be the antibodies by themselves, or else patients who had once had the virus, but had recovered, would be experiencing cytokine storms if they were again exposed.

Finally, a group of scientists at Imperial College in London, studying a different respiratory disease which had the same problem (Respiratory Syncytial Virus), figured out that the usual cause was the formaldehyde commonly used to prepare some kinds of vaccines. Apparently, formaldehyde causes carbonyl groups to get attached to the Th2 antibodies that are part of the body’s immune system against respiratory diseases, and those carbonyl groups cause the cytokine storms.

Experiments with aged mice have proven to be an excellent way to determine whether a vaccine causes VED. Nucleic acid vaccines (the DNA and RNA vaccines being invented by American companies) have not caused VED. Still it is worthwhile to test all vaccines with aged mice to make sure. Mancef Slaoui of Glaxo Smith Kline is well aware of this problem and of the other potential problems with vaccines.

Graphic credit: Whitehouse.gov