68. Money! And more money!
A few days later, an expert introduced by Mr. Kwon visited our company.
“I’ve never met you before. I’m Min Myung-ki.”
“I’m Kang Kang-sik, chairman of Karma Investment.”
“I’m Nam Jung-won, CEO of Karma Holdings.”
After a brief exchange of pleasantries, he got straight to the point.
“You left the government during the MERS outbreak?”
“Yes, I was the head of the epidemic prevention division at the National Institutes of Health, but I felt a lot of skepticism and quit.”
“Excuse me, but what are you doing now?”
“I took a year off, and now I’m working as a salaried doctor in a small family medicine clinic in Cheolsan-dong run by a junior.”
“What? You’re a doctor?”
“What? Of course I’m a doctor, didn’t you know? Among the agencies under the Ministry of Health and Welfare, many executives are doctors. Director Kwon Jun-ho is a doctor, and the current head of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a doctor.”
“Ah—.”
I see.
I had no idea.
By the way.
“Did you hear about this from Mr. Kwon?”
“Yes, I did. It was a very interesting story.”
“What do you think of Dr. Min? I mean, I’m kind of leading the charge, but I’ve heard a lot of reactions, mostly that it’s a hoax, and I think that’s fair enough.”
“Absolutely not! He’ll be back! I don’t know if the timing will be what Chairman Kang thinks, but I’m sure a pandemic will happen.”
“…”
These guys.
It was like they were collectively beaten up during the MERS outbreak.
How many times could they have been beaten up like this?
There was even a flash of madness in Dr. Min Myung-ki’s eyes.
“You must have had a really hard time during the MERS outbreak.”
“It’s not about us being hard, it’s about 38 people who shouldn’t have died because of our total lack of response. We were the worst hit country in the world, and if we hadn’t been, would they have said we should change MERS to KORS (Korea Respiratory Syndrome)?”
“…”
“I still can’t sleep. Just lying down reminds me of what happened. I didn’t take a year off work for nothing, and it took me that long to get over it.”
“You’ve been through a lot.”
“Anyway, I fully support what you’re saying, Mr. Kang, and if there’s anything I can do, please let me know, I’d love to do anything.”
“And what about the hospital job now?”
“That’s a position my junior created for me anyway. It’s not like I’m missing out and taking a hit or anything.”
“Okay, so what I’m thinking is—.”
I elaborated on what I was working on.
“I’m planning to stockpile as much quarantine supplies as possible in the event of a pandemic caused by such a virus, and I’m also planning to stockpile a lot of treatment devices like ecmo and ventilators in case there’s an explosion of people with respiratory illnesses, and other equipment like diagnostic kits.”
“That’s great, an individual preparing for something that only the government can do, that’s great, that’s great. It’s just—.”
“Only what?”
“Why aren’t you helping to develop a vaccine?”
“What? Is it possible to develop a vaccine? Dr. Kwon said it would be difficult?”
“Ah! I understand what Dr. Kwon meant, but the war against these guys will eventually end with a vaccine, so we must develop one.”
“Is that even possible, and how do you develop a vaccine for a virus that hasn’t even happened?”
“Hmmm—.”
Dr. Myung-ki Min tapped the table as if to organize his thoughts for a moment, then spoke.
“First of all, the vaccine itself isn’t that difficult to develop.”
“That’s what Dr. Kwon said as well.”
“I’m sure he did. It’s not hard to develop a vaccine, but there are a lot of hurdles to get it through clinical trials and get it approved by the FDA.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes. To get to Phase III, you have to recruit at least 30,000 people before the FDA will approve it, and the cost is huge – over 100 billion just for that. And then there’s the time. The Ebola virus vaccine, which is one of the fastest examples ever, took five years to get approved.”
“Five, five years?”
“Yes, that’s right, that’s unusual fast, and normally you’re looking at five to ten years.”
“…”
Well, that sucks—.
In what year are we going to make a vaccine and then sit on our asses?
People will die rather than suffer.
“Then it’s a waste, isn’t it, because even if we get a short five years, it’ll all be swept away in the meantime?”
“No, that’s not true, because when it gets to the point where it sweeps through the entire human race, to the point where we call it a pandemic, the process will be compressed and shortened.”
“And that’s how it could happen?”
“Absolutely. The whole point of having a rigorous vaccine approval process is to minimize side effects, which is why you have trials in as many people as possible for as long as possible. But if people are dying right now, is it better to have 0. 5% fewer side effects, or is it better to approve a vaccine with a small side effect, but as long as it works for at least 90% of people?”
“…”
This is a tough one.
Of course we should use vaccines, even if they have some side effects.
We can’t afford to have millions or tens of millions of people die or suffer from the after-effects of a few outliers.
Not to mention the economic pain of the world coming to a standstill.
If we have the time, we should develop according to the FM.
“At the end of the day, whether it’s our FDA or the FDA in the U.S., they’re strictly approving to save lives, and in a pandemic, they’re going to streamline the process and let a few side effects slide.”
“So how much can you shorten it?”
“Normally, vaccine development takes 15 to 30 months for the preclinical phase, then 30 months each for the first and second trials, and 30 months for the third large-scale trial. But if a pandemic hits, we can cut it all down to one year.”
“Wow, that fast?”
“The vaccine is pretty much done in the preclinical phase. The problem is the side effects that come with the clinical phase. If we’re willing to accept some side effects, we can shorten the first and second phases to six months each, and we can make the third phase an emergency approval to replace it with actual use.”
“Ho-oh—.”
I guess when people shut up, they’ll do our country’s proprietary ‘quick and dirty’.
“Then what about the idea of developing a vaccine in advance? How can you develop a vaccine for a virus that hasn’t even happened yet?”
“Well, we’ve had a taste of it before, haven’t we?”
“You mean SARS and MERS?”
“Bingo! The viruses that cause severe acute respiratory illness that we’re concerned about, all of them in the Orthocoronavirinae family, the Betacoronavirus genus, and the SARS-CoV species.”
“Do these have dependents?”
“Yes, viruses are also classified as dependents.”
“Huh—.”
“And then we have MERS-Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which is a variant of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus that we used to refer to as SARS back in 2003, so they’re all beta coronaviruses, and the virus that’s going to hit us harder in the future is not going to deviate from that.”
“So you’re saying that we can develop a vaccine based on SARS and MERS first, and then develop a vaccine that’s effective against the new coronavirus as early as when we have a full-blown pandemic?”
“Exactly. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Hmph—.”
Dr. Min’s words made sense to me now, but I had a new question.
“Let me ask you one more question.”
“Anything.”
“If you can be so prepared, why aren’t you being developed by multinational pharmaceutical companies or the U.S. or European governments? You said you could be prepared for anything.”
“It’s simple. Look at where SARS and MERS are coming from.”
“What? Outbreaks?”
“Where did it start and spread?”
“Well, SARS is in China, MERS is in the Middle East, as the name implies, and Korea——. Ah!”
Holy sh*t!
The unexpected fact hit me in the back of the head.
“Do you see now? SARS originated in China and spread through Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, and elsewhere, and MERS originated in the Middle East and spread through Korea, both of which had nothing to do with the center of the world, North America and Europe. In other words, they didn’t catch the eye of developed countries and multinational corporations, and they didn’t have a chance of making money.”
“That’s a sh*tty situation.”
“That’s right. It’s a really f*cked up situation, because it means that no two human lives are the same, they’re all different.”
It’s a really f*cked up thing.
All I’m saying is, if this happened in North America or Europe, we’d be prepared.
“At least MERS got a few multinational pharmaceutical companies interested, but then it went out of fashion in our country, so they backed off, and Russia almost made a vaccine called Sputnik, but then backed off.”
“Okay, I see what you mean, so is it possible to develop a vaccine in our country?”
“It’s certainly possible. In fact, it might be most advantageous.”
“What do you mean, most advantageous?”
“We’ve had SARS in my country, though only three people were infected. Not to mention MERS, which was like a home run. So we have plenty of viruses to develop a vaccine.”
“Oh!”
“In fact, I understand that the International Vaccine Institute at Seoul National University is working on a vaccine for MERS.”
“Is there an international vaccine institute in Korea?”
“hahahaha! Few people know this, but the KIIT is located in Korea. It was created by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and somehow we were able to get it to Seoul National University in 1997. The Bill and Melinda Foundation also made a large donation.”
“…”
I wondered how long they had been fighting.
“In any case, we can develop a vaccine. It’s the one thing that could end the novelty bias, and I think we should do it.”
“And what do you need?”
“Money! And more money!”
“…”
It came down to money.
“How much money?”
“Well, we need a competent pharmaceutical company to take the lead, and then once we start developing it, the money will keep coming. At a guess, we’ll need to spend at least 300 billion in a year or so.”
“Hmmm—.”
300 billion?
That’s less than $300 million in dollars.
It’s about what our short-term investment team at Karma Investments makes on average in 10 days.
If we could save the world with that money?
There’s definitely money to be made.
This is a no-brainer, Go!
“Okay, we’ll fully support you, even if it costs $30 instead of $300 billion! Let’s develop our vaccine!”
“You’re great, I respect you, I love you!”
“Let’s leave out the love—.”
“…”
Anyway, it was decided to develop a vaccine.