Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Francesco Levi. Laura Carlson is out.
Speaker 1: It's day two eight since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic.
Speaker 1: Today's main story A group of renegade scientists are trying
Speaker 1: to make their own ultra fast tracked vaccine without all
Speaker 1: the regulations slowing them down. They're learning that's harder than
Speaker 1: it seems. But first, here's what happened in virus News today.
Speaker 1: President Trump expects to be released today from Walter Reed
Speaker 1: Medical Center, where he is being treated for COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: In a tweet, Trump said he would be discharged at
Speaker 1: six thirty pm and that Americans shouldn't fear the virus.
Speaker 1: White House physician Sean Conley said at an afternoon press
Speaker 1: conference that the President has met discharge criteria but is
Speaker 1: not out of the woods and upbeat. Conley said Trump's
Speaker 1: duties could safely be completed at the White House. Conflicting
Speaker 1: and incomplete accounts from the White House, the President's doctors,
Speaker 1: and the President himself have marked Trump's diagnosis and treatment. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: at least three members of the White House press staff,
Speaker 1: including Press Secretary Kaylee McKinney, have tested positive for COVID,
Speaker 1: as have two members of the Residents housekeeping staff, adding
Speaker 1: to the cluster of an affected lawmakers, administration officials, and
Speaker 1: others around the president. In most parts of America, COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen is making a dangerous comeback. The disease is hammering
Speaker 1: rural America and smaller cities, and raising anxiety in New York.
Speaker 1: Experts warn that school reopenings and older weather may cause
Speaker 1: the situation to rapidly deteriorate. In thirty four states, the
Speaker 1: seven day average of new cases is higher now than
Speaker 1: it was a month ago. Although the virus has waned
Speaker 1: in populous states including California and Florida, it is wreaking
Speaker 1: unprecedented havoc in the Midwest and making a return in
Speaker 1: parts of the Northeast. Finally, Russia reported almost eleven thousand
Speaker 1: new cases in a day, the highest daily increase in
Speaker 1: almost five months. Moscow ordered schools closed for two weeks
Speaker 1: from Monday, and top officials around the country have called
Speaker 1: on residents to wear masks and observe other precautions as
Speaker 1: hospital admissions have spiked. Now for today's main story, dozens
Speaker 1: of companies are rushing to test and produce a COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen vaccine as fast as possible. But a fringe group
Speaker 1: of d I Y scientists made a bet that with
Speaker 1: out regulatory hurdles, they could produce a vaccine themselves a
Speaker 1: whole lot faster. But, as Kristin V. Brown reports, they
Speaker 1: learned that making a vaccine that works reliably and can
Speaker 1: be proven safe is incredibly difficult. All right, So anyway, um,
Speaker 1: here we go. I'm here with the greatest of all time,
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan's I'm ready to go. Josiah Ziner is about
Speaker 1: to inject himself with his own d I Y coronavirus vaccine.
Speaker 1: Josiah is a former NASA scientist turned bio hacker, and
Speaker 1: he's live streaming his experiment on YouTube. He's on screen
Speaker 1: in his makeshift Oakland lab, wearing blue gloves and a
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan jersey. Josiah is cleaning off his shoulder where
Speaker 1: he plans to stick the needle. Two collaborators join him
Speaker 1: on screen, and they are also preparing to inject themselves
Speaker 1: with the vaccine. Ready, I got two point five in
Speaker 1: my syringe and then I'll do another two point five,
Speaker 1: all right. The two other participants follow him. One of them,
Speaker 1: Daria don't Sava, a Ukrainian biohacker, has a friend injector.
Speaker 1: She doesn't like needles. Oh, he knows I do not like.
Speaker 1: Josiah is known for this kind of stuff. Years ago
Speaker 1: he left institutional science for bio hacking. He has done
Speaker 1: all kinds of experiments that should probably come with a
Speaker 1: don't try this at home morning, including giving himself a
Speaker 1: fecal matter transplant to treat some stomach issues. When the
Speaker 1: pandemic struck. Josiah saw an opportunity to show just how
Speaker 1: much a biohacker could do you with a little cash
Speaker 1: and know how. He thinks things like regulations can slow
Speaker 1: down drug development. Josiah says self experimentation has the potential
Speaker 1: to make science happen a lot more quickly and cheaply.
Speaker 1: The vaccine they are injecting themselves with is a replication
Speaker 1: of one that worked in monkeys. In May, a group
Speaker 1: of researchers published a paper demonstrating a vaccine for COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen that seemed to trigger immunity to the virus and monkeys.
Speaker 1: Josiah decided that he would recreate that vaccine and then
Speaker 1: test it on himself in a series of online live
Speaker 1: streamed classes. He recruited to other bio hackers, Daria and
Speaker 1: David Ishi in Mississippi to do the experiment with him.
Speaker 1: They nicknamed the experiment Project McAfee, after the anti viral software.
Speaker 1: Here's Josia introducing the first class. You all just wanted
Speaker 1: us to eject this DNA vaccine into ourselves, and we've
Speaker 1: already had it made. So we already have the DNA
Speaker 1: vaccine and in sufficient quantities. We had it professionally made.
Speaker 1: But we thought that it would it wouldn't give much
Speaker 1: to society if we just inject ourselves with it. We
Speaker 1: wanted to give more. We wanted to, you know, teach
Speaker 1: people to fish. So each week Josiah, Daria, and David
Speaker 1: would log onto the live stream and explain a little
Speaker 1: bit more about their experiment. They talked about how to
Speaker 1: read an interpret a scientific paper, and how to get
Speaker 1: DNA for something like this made for you. For this class,
Speaker 1: I want to go over how we went from the
Speaker 1: paper to an actual DNA vaccine and had it made
Speaker 1: and synthesized and sent to us and all that all
Speaker 1: that good stuff, and how to get blood work done
Speaker 1: and antibodies tested to make sure the experiment was accurate.
Speaker 1: So my veins pop out the secrets actually being able
Speaker 1: to feel the veins and not necessarily just see them,
Speaker 1: but be able to feel them. It goes without saying
Speaker 1: that none of you should try this at home. Be careful,
Speaker 1: be safe out there, don't copy us. After two months,
Speaker 1: Josiah tested himself for antibodies again and it seemed as
Speaker 1: if the experiment was working. Further testing of their blood
Speaker 1: showed that Josiah, David, and Daria all seemed to have
Speaker 1: antibodies that suggested immunity to the virus. But this didn't
Speaker 1: mean Josiah was about to start handing out his vaccine
Speaker 1: to friends and family. This was the first time Josiah
Speaker 1: had tried an experiment quite like this, and he realized
Speaker 1: something when he looked at the results. There were simply
Speaker 1: too many asterisks to really be sure how to interpret
Speaker 1: what they found. These things are messy, That's what I'm learning.
Speaker 1: Like when you do a drug test on a human being.
Speaker 1: Human beings their biology is so complex that is messy, right, Like,
Speaker 1: the results are going to be messy, The experiments are
Speaker 1: going to be messy. So like you do thirty thousand people,
Speaker 1: so that the messiness kind of averaged out. For example,
Speaker 1: as I had gotten antibody test at lab Core before
Speaker 1: the experiment, that tests came back negative. But when he
Speaker 1: tested himself again right after that, it wasn't so simple.
Speaker 1: You know. I went to lamp Corp And I got
Speaker 1: tested and they said I wasn't positive for coronavirus antibodies.
Speaker 1: But when I run the experiment myself, it's pretty obvious
Speaker 1: I have some sort of antibodies. So he did have
Speaker 1: some antibodies, but they weren't neutralizing the virus. So it's
Speaker 1: like this weird thing, like what is going on there?
Speaker 1: M Are they just other antibodies the coronavirus? Are the
Speaker 1: antibodies to a different coronavirus that was a mask? And
Speaker 1: that's like an example. If we were just going by
Speaker 1: antibodies alone or something, you know, just being like, you know,
Speaker 1: did it produce antibodies? I could have just ran a test,
Speaker 1: you know, after I injected the vaccine. It would have
Speaker 1: came back as positive. For Josiah. That raised questions about
Speaker 1: how to interpret the final results. Maybe the reason I
Speaker 1: have antibodies is because, like I was already my immune
Speaker 1: system was already primed. I was infected before or something
Speaker 1: like that, and the vaccine maybe just you know, it
Speaker 1: was like a booster boosted my antibodies and my immune
Speaker 1: system or something like that. Right, it's super complicated. It
Speaker 1: starts to get and then you're just like, holy cow,
Speaker 1: this thing isn't as simple as we set out, you know,
Speaker 1: just like injective scene and measures some antibody project. McAfee
Speaker 1: isn't the only COVID nineteen vaccine project happening outside of
Speaker 1: normal regulatory structures right now, with thousands of people dying
Speaker 1: every day, speed is of the essence, and vaccines take time.
Speaker 1: The fastest vaccine ever developed in history was the Month's Vaccine,
Speaker 1: and it took four years. The clinical trials alone took
Speaker 1: two years. In the US, Operation warp Speed aims to
Speaker 1: approve vaccine candidates more quickly than ever, but the first
Speaker 1: one is likely still months away. Josiah's human trials took
Speaker 1: less than three months. Hank Greeley is a Stanford bioethicist
Speaker 1: who has become somewhat of an expert on Josias antics
Speaker 1: over the years. He says, in the end, while the
Speaker 1: experiment was interesting. It simply wasn't big enough to add
Speaker 1: much to the body of scientific research. I think we
Speaker 1: could fairly say it adds a tiny bit of value.
Speaker 1: It shows that if you do this to three people,
Speaker 1: none of the three dropped it. That's, you know, that's something.
Speaker 1: None of the three apparently had terrible reactions. Now you'd
Speaker 1: want thirty thousand instead of three, but three adds a
Speaker 1: tiny bit. I think the potential risks without way any
Speaker 1: benefits you could expect from an end of three vaccine trial. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it added a thimble thimble's worth of water to the ocean.
Speaker 1: But Hank says there is value in showing what really
Speaker 1: goes into making a vaccine. So I think there is
Speaker 1: some value in showing that this is not magic. It's
Speaker 1: not rocket science, but it is I think useful for
Speaker 1: people to know that actually making making the vaccine isn't
Speaker 1: that hard. It's testing it and knowing that it's safe
Speaker 1: and knowing that it's effective. That's the hard part. There
Speaker 1: is a benefit in having people realize that it's not magic.
Speaker 1: In the end, Josiah's coronavirus trials actually made him decide
Speaker 1: to take a break from human experimentation. He says it's
Speaker 1: just too complicated. Instead, he says his next project will
Speaker 1: be teaching people to grow chicken cells and to make
Speaker 1: fake meat. And that's it for our show. For coverage
Speaker 1: of the outbreak from one bureaus around the world, visit
Speaker 1: bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like the show,
Speaker 1: please leave us a review and a rating on Apple
Speaker 1: Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more
Speaker 1: listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is
Speaker 1: produced by tofor Foreheads, Jordan Gospore, Magnus Hendrickson, and Laura Carlson.
Speaker 1: Today's main story was reported by Kristin V. Brown. Original
Speaker 1: music by Leo Sidron. Our editors are Rick Shine and
Speaker 1: me Francesco Levi. I'm also Bloomberg's head of Podcasts.