P3: Pandemic Prevention Platform (2017)
darpa.mil
darpa.mil
Example:
> A principal benefit of the nucleic-acid-based approach to limiting the spread of infection is that genetic constructs introduced into the body would process quickly and not integrate into an individual’s genome. Similarly, the antibodies produced in response to treatment would only be present in the body for weeks to months. This is consistent with DARPA's intent to safely deliver transient immunity, halting the spread of disease by creating a firewall, and buying time for longer-term medical responses to be developed and deployed.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170710035550/https://www.fbo.g...
"Antibody level predicted to protect against chikungunya infection achieved within hours; projected to be maintained for at least 16 weeks at the middle and high doses"
The incompetence is pretty obvious and staggering, and as per Fauci's testimony, the CDC is not designed for the crisis we are now experiencing. That is, to unpack this, the Center for Disease Control is not designed for disease control. He's clearly a formidable scientist, but it's also clear that mismanagement at the agencies is pretty rampant.
They were asked point blank several times why we still can't test even the frontline medical staff, and they did not have an answer. This is 100% thoroughly fucked up beyond repair.
e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/31/us-coronavirus...
$7B+/yr and we get 70 people tested per day as thousands are being infected, and hundreds are about to die.
IMO their funding should be cut to zero for this, and reallocated to people who know how to do this kind of thing. You can find such people at WHO.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...
By long in place, I mean first made many years ago and updated regularly as things change. That is the CDC's job.
It is tempting to want instant actions, but they often turn out to be knee jerk and wrong.
Also known in negotiation as "anchoring" - you give people a crazy, exaggerated version of what you want, then you tone it down and easily get what you really wanted to begin with. Anyone who ever participated in any kind of a business negotiation would recognize this immediately. But 99.99% of people haven't negotiated anything ever in their lives, so they don't.
People treat Trump as this linear simpleton, and he plays along, but he's not.
And yes, you can in fact fix incompetence by giving the incompetent organization more money. Organizations are made up of people, and those people have varying levels of competence, and the set of people isn't fixed, either. Sometimes you have competent ICs begging for funding and incompetent managers who can't present the case for it. Sometimes you have competent managers who don't have enough budget to hire competent ICs at salaries competitive with industry. Sometimes everyone is competent but too afraid of risking their job to speak out against structures or processes that prevent them from doing their best work. If you think there's corruption, that's a different matter, but if it's just incompetence, throwing more money at the problem sounds like a fantastic plan.
Edit:
It's being reported on currently:
https://www.newsweek.com/former-head-white-house-pandemic-of...
The CDC makes reagents that are required. But the full test requires taking swabs, going to a lab, going through various steps. It's not self contained like a pregnancy test.
So the CDC spokesperson was uncertain because the CDC is providing the reagents but the labs are literally just coming online.
I am referring to this video. The exchange I am thinking about is roughly 40 minutes in but I couldn't find it quickly.
Fix the agency. Don't let smart people disappear into retirement and the private sector. Don't annihilate the remaining expertise that does exist. You will never get them back.
Thanks to social/mainstream media's business model deeply based on fear and outrage, leaders that we have these days are pandering to their fan clubs on both sides. We have created conditions where that is their only move, because there is always someone else from both parties, just around the corner pandering even harder.
Stuck in the middle are orgs and institutions whether it's the military one day, intelligence another, cdc or fed a third who will just have take the beating.
Because most of the population hasn't heard of the concept of Bounded Rationality and it's implications, and are most definitely not interested in hearing about it when people start dying.
Orgs over time have understood that and put up a show knowing they just need to outlast a couple news cycles.
There is no question of repairing these orgs without changing the underlying social media/news media reaction-counter-reaction, attention capture biz model.
That process is unfolding thanks to trump's election/Brexit/russia etc but it will take years. In the meantime every crisis is going to sound worse than it actually is.
Note it is not a vaccine - a vaccine is something like part of a virus that then drives an immune response ( body evolves antibodies against it ) - here you are taking an antibody sequence you know works and directly putting that in the body and genetically programming the body to make it.
Here's how:
- find and clone the patients own antibody that allowed them to recover.
- deliver that antibody in nucleic acid form to new patients so they can make the antibody themselves.
The idea is to be able to produce enough doses quickly enough to protect front line staff in the containment phase.
As the antibody has already been discovered by the recovering patient, you can use single cell screening and cloning to retrieve the particular antibody gene.
The second step avoids many many months of building and scaling a protein manufacturing process ( though manufacturing steps still exist ).
It's a new technology and so carries some unknowns - but in the case of pandemic then you could argue these are justified.
There has already been a proof of principal run through and a number of companies were able to deliver proof of concepts within the timescale. The next question is how well these work in people.
Main finding was at the high dose, there were some adverse events but no serious adverse events, and they all self-resolved without intervention. At the lower doses (0.3 and 0.1mpk), it still provided months of protection against infection assuming the "protective level" is accurate.
However, normally there is a long and potentially winding road between a phase 1, through phases II & III to a successful market launch.
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/01/31/Military-allowed-to-...
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/pdf/2018-Influenz...
https://news.usni.org/2014/10/08/100-marines-liberia-thursda...
Also with the military setup - lots of people living together in barracks - infectious diseases have a high risk of spreading rapidly.
>The teams have proven they can meet this ambitious timeline in previous trials using the influenza and Zika viruses.
The army is also well trained in securing an area. Need to enforce no travel, the army learns that in basic training.
Again, this isn't about the US army, it is about any competent military in the current world. Limited of course by their budget.
The article headline is "Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3)"
Mods, maybe change it to that?