The Covid 19 pandemic continued to get progressively worse, and just about everyone knew it, and Horizon, like various other private medical and scientific companies had its interests in finding a vaccine for it, particularly as facts came out that showed the virus’s spread could infect Animalians. That was revealed in the summer when Molly caught it and Animalia Ambassadoria reported it. It was something that shocked many, given the “image” many had of Animalians being super healthy and fit. In this no one expected an Animalian of any kind to actually catch Covid 19, but then it happened.
Explaining Molly’s infection then became the big thing for Horizon to figure out and thus provide information on how to contain and prevent further spread and would other Animalians be vulnerable to it. The first answer was the point that Molly, as a Dinotopian, was a converted Human and that the part of her Human genome that stayed with her after her conversion was what made her vulnerable and she caught Covid 19 the way any other person would. This theory remained big until the fall when Horizon was informed that Gooseberry had caught Covid from one of Bowman’s neighbors while helping with some construction or repair project there. For Gooseberry’s diagnosis meant that even uplifted Animalians could catch the virus from Humans.
It all served as additional warnings that Horizon and Animalia both tried to convey through the summer and into the fall before the election. But many chose not to listen or felt that the warning should only be for the sick and the elderly or for those that were “weak,” and this contributed to the ever increasing number of Covid cases and many states looking seriously at shutting down, at least elements of the state, to try and get things under control as hospitals began filling with patients, and even the states with more infrastructure and supplies were having issues, particularly as others sought to find a vaccine.
And it was those complications that was bringing patients from across northern Nevada to Lyre and Horizon Light for treatment for Covid. It wasn’t so much because Horizon Light had more supplies than other hospitals but because the hospital had grown to cope with the number of Animalians that made Lyre/Animalia into a rather decent sized community that needed a larger hospital and Horizon Light covered both, and since Lyre and Animalia hadn’t had it as bad as other cities, Horizon Light had the space to keep patients while they recovered without straining the small clinics in northern Nevada that simply didn’t have the capacity for them.
Horizon Light kept in close contact with the main Horizon offices to keep track on treatment suggestions among other things, as well as any and all progress on the vaccines that would be needed if life was to truly return to normal, particularly given the way so many people seemed to behave, despite the fact that the pandemic was everywhere and highly infectious.
“I’m not sure I can really help with treatments,” Melvin Qvite, Horizon’s CEO said over a zoom meeting with Horizon Light’s hospital manager, a Jamie Loos, “the CDC and other hospitals might have better guidance for you there.”
“We’re well prepared for things like treatment, Mr. Qvite, that I’m confident of,” Jamie Loos answered, not getting into the fact that it meant all doctors and nurses having “homework” to deal with preparing for any all possible Covid cases that would be brought in, “what I’m more concerned on is the safety of my doctors and staff. Many are Human and there are a few Animalians as well. I don’t want them to get sick… and I’ve even tried with some calls to the state government to get help for more doctors to come in… just in case… but a lot of that is running into dead ends. Particularly with issues where we could end up getting people from California or Oregon because of their proximity to us or because of wild fires and so on…”
“So, this is more a vaccine issue,” Melvin Qvite said slowly as essentially read between the lines and then watched Jamie Loos nod in response.
That was one of the things that did frustrate him a bit. He’d actually tried to get Horizon allowed to participate in either Project Warp Speed or with some of the other research issues in trying to find a vaccine for Covid 19, largely with the argument that more teams working and potentially even sharing information could help speed up the process and make the end result more effective in the long run, but prior to Molly’s diagnosis in the summer, the government had denied Horizon the right to research into it and did its best to complicate the ability to acquire samples to test on its own. It was only through some contacts with other private entities that Horizon was ultimately able to make some progress there, and that still didn’t happen until after Molly had been diagnosed.
This meant that Horizon was months behind nearly all the other companies and government funded groups looking into finding a Covid 19 vaccine, and that was something that slowed things down considerably. Not just because the disease was new and Horizon was held back from being able to run lab tests and get the needed samples, but also because of some of the complications that the Animalia Virus presented to the issue. They had a vaccine for the Animalia Virus, but a lot of that came from Horizon’s creation of what became the Animalia Virus. The present issue was how would an Animalian’s system respond to a vaccine for Covid and would it need to be designed for a specific Animalian species or could it be generalized for all Animalians.
And there had already been some indications that Animalians might require two different versions of the vaccine for Covid. Some of that came from reports that the vaccines that were showing some signs of progress with Molly at Skull Island didn’t work with blood samples with non-Dinotopian Animalians. This presented odd and complex challenges with the Animalia Virus and the make of Animalians, as all Dinotopians had various features in which they were very different from other Animalians, such as the loss of fingers or how some would have their teeth change completely and others would have enlarged or more numerous Human-like teeth. There was some guess in that it was something that related to the age of the fossil DNA used in the Dinotopian strains of the Animalia Virus when compared to more modern Animalian strains, and some of that made sense… but if true, it also meant Horizon would have to find where the dividing line was and would any mammal based Animalians from post Cretaceous but pre Pleistocene time periods need similar modifications. And that was something that could be done at the moment because the pre-historic mammal Animalians were largely Pleistocene animals and hadn’t required the add-ons that the Dinotopian strains did, and Covid made acquiring the bones or other samples to then construct a new strain of the Animalia Virus more difficult. And in this, from what had been reported to him, Melvin Qvite couldn’t give exact answers.
“Yes,” Jamie Loos said urgently and nervously, “I know Horizon has been behind… but…”
“You were hoping Pfizer’s announcement would help?” Melvin Qvite spoke and waited for a small nod, “well we can work with Pfizer to see that your Human staff can get doses they need… But as for any Animalian vaccine… THAT is going to take some time, I’m afraid.”
“What?!” Jamie Loos gasped, surprised out of belief.
After all the news reports that two companies had Covid vaccines that looked to be better than 90% effective being ready for distribution before the end of the year, Jamie Loos felt that was good news. Reports that indicated that a lot of the progress made on the vaccines had come from the fact that those developing it were working with Covid as though it were like other Sars viruses and thus having a bit more of a head start that would have been otherwise thought gave her added confidence that the vaccine could and would work, regardless of how fast it had been developed. Jamie had to take that as good news and felt that Horizon had to be on pace with Pfizer, given its involvement with Animalia.
“It would appear that the Human vaccine for Covid doesn’t respond well to Animalians,” Melvin Qvite said slowly, “Pfizer did allow us to run some blood tests with their vaccine and we found that Animalian DNA reacted rather… violently to their vaccine. Thus while it looks like it works well with Humans… it could kill an Animalian. Thus why when it is ready, Pfizer will handle the vaccination of your Human staff.”
“What about an Animalian vaccine for Covid, surely you’ve been working on that?” Jamie Loos asked.
“It’s progressing… but we’re only getting into the second stage and running into some minor problems,” Melvin Qvite warned, “and much of it is the late start. We didn’t even access to active samples of the Corona Virus until after Molly caught in the start of the summer. In this we were MONTHS behind everyone else in terms of development. And while we have talked with the other companies and looking into what they’re doing… we’ve still had to put in different tweaks to it in order to work with some of the complexities with regard to Animalians and particularly between Animalians based off ancient creatures like the Dinotopians and more modern animals… and there have been some key differences.”
“Such as?” Jamie Loos asked.
“Well… the lab reports would indicate that the vaccine we’ve been developing with Molly’s help looks to be effective with Dinotopians and the others on Skull Island have even volunteered to help with that when we’re ready to actually test the vaccine,” Melvin Qvite spoke, “but the two Coelacanths we’ve uplifted have not had similar results in the lab tests. We think it’s a result in the age of the DNA used in converting Humans to Dinotopians and uplifting more modern Animals…”
“But aren’t Coelacanths “living fossils” to begin with?” Jamie Loos asked.
“They’re of an ancient lineage, but the ones we uplifted are modern coelacanths and aren’t the ancient species from the fossil record and thus are a modern animal,” Melvin corrected, “I’ve instructed the team that’s done the preliminary work with Molly at Skull Island to head up to Wisconsin and see if a hospital lab can rent some space for us there and we can start working on a separate strain with regard to the uplifted Cow that caught it up there… Gooseberry, I believe her name is.”
Jamie Loos looked down with a sigh, and a part of her was tempted to slam her fists down on her desk, but all that would do jostle her computer and potentially wreck the connection. Not to mention that it would betray the frustration that was had at a lot of the situation. A part of her was sure that the outgoing administration, as it had done with so many things had tried, was trying to punish Animalia and Horizon for not supporting him. Because Animalia wasn’t out to become super soldiers for him and wasn’t praising him and Horizon wasn’t donating money to him and thus he delayed access to try and work on a vaccine that could be delivered for both Humans and Animalians, and now the result was that they could only work on an Animalian specific Covid 19 vaccine and that also looked like it would need two separate kinds, one for Animalians based on more modern animals and one for Dinotopians and other Animalians that were based off of “older” animals. The only thing that likely ease the distribution was that because of all these political games, on top of not conceding an election he’d clearly lost, had meant that by the time it would likely come to distributing the Animalian Vaccine would come after the new administration took over.
“So… what kind of timeline are we looking at, here?” Jamie Loos asked.
“Optimistically, we should be ready to move onto phase three and actual trials with Dinotopian vaccine by early January and then distribution of it by early February,” Melvin Qvite answered, “assuming that trials then work out as well as Pfizer’s have in the Human vaccine, though that could be difficult given that we’d only have a limited number of people we could test it on… but if things work well, then we’d likely also vaccinate the Dinotopians in the course of the trials and we’d actually deal with the distribution issue in the course of testing.”
“And with the vaccine for Animalians based on more modern animal based Animalians?” Jamie asked.
“That will depend on the calls we get in Wisconsin,” Melvin Qvite spoke, “because nearly all the Animalians in the state have connections to the Bowman family… and all of them converted at home with the request that we travel to them… or they came to Horizon for their conversion and then returned home in Wisconsin we haven’t been able to expand in the same way we have with some of the other colony cities. In many of them, we’ve been able to either build a facility like we have in Lyre or our offices are built in connection to the local hospital/clinic and thus we have some direct medical and laboratory connections… We don’t have that in Wisconsin or many of the other places where Animalians live in the US but we don’t have a colony there. In this… there could have been other Animalians that have caught Covid and recovered besides Gooseberry that we simply don’t know about.”
“Don’t know about…” Jamie Loos said slowly.
“We know Gooseberry caught it and recovered because she posted it,” Melvin Qvite spoke, “not all may have done that… but that’s beside the point with regard to your question…”
There was a pause as Melvin brought his hand up and wiped it down his face. Jamie could see some sense of frustration with him too. Jamie Loos couldn’t tell if this was scientific frustration or general political/corporate frustration. Horizon did a lot of work in genetics and related sciences, often looking for either cures for cancer or nutritional supplements and hormone therapy, which is part of what lead to Animalia in the first place, and as such Melvin Qvite could have some scientific degrees in his own right, or he could merely have a business degree and simply provided the cash for the projects Horizon did and then made money off of what worked. And in many ways the issue related to a Covid vaccine for Animalians was problematic.
From a scientific perspective it was problematic for health issues, which the medical community had complained about with regard to the outgoing administration’s response to Covid 19. It was too cavalier and in many ways too anti-science to actually control the virus’s spread which was now setting up the problems going into the winter months and that was leading to many places beginning to see their hospitals reach capacity and even go beyond them because so many were getting sick. It was that sort of thing that was having patients from much of northern Nevada being brought to Lyre and Horizon Light. They weren’t as heavily loaded and thus they HAD to take the load off of some of the other areas in Nevada and make due because the much of the state HAD to be free to contract and spread the disease, because wearing a face mask was “Fascism” or “Socialism,” apparently.
From a business perspective, Horizon wasn’t going to do well because it was delayed in being able to provide anything, and she’d seen enough coming out of the outgoing administration that looked as though it would do whatever it took to try and kill the companies that didn’t help it hold power or fight its battles in an election it had lost. And as much as the Republican Party claimed to be for “private enterprise” and the “free market,” under the present administration, they’d had little to no qualm with using the government’s power to monitor, attack, and regulate those that didn’t toe THEIR line. And that served to hurt what business Horizon could do to either A) drive the costs of the vaccine down, as they would have to make some money off of the cost of the work to develop it one way or another or B) even have any trust for the vaccine when it was ready. And all the while the world and the pandemic moved on.
“And with Wisconsin?” Jamie asked.
“Based on what we’ve had with Molly… if we can get some lab access there to do the work, we might be able to have a vaccine for non-Dinotopian Animalians ready to move into phase two by April of next year,” Melvin said slowly, “if not… and we have to move Gooseberry to Lyre and have her work with the labs here in Lyre… we might manage it a bit faster as we have control over our labs here and have some better equipment than what we have here… it WON’T be by much. And that is an optimistic assessment of what I’ve been told using our work with Molly as a measuring stick.”
“So… we won’t likely see a viable vaccine for non-Dinotopian Animalians ready for distribution until next summer,” Jamie said slowly.
“Based on present information and meaning that Animalians will need to abide by all present safety means to mitigate the spread of Covid 19 longer than Humans… unless we get all Humanity to agree to become Animalians at once and use the Animalia Virus to cure against any and all disease in an instant and then mitigate for a couple of weeks,” Melvin finished, “which I’d find unlikely… as most of those presently falling victim to the disease are the least likely to wish to be Animalians.”
Jamie sighed and nodded before thanking Horizon’s CEO for the update, something felt needed given the overall situation and what was likely coming. It was something that presented a problem that was made difficult by the complicated and at times even unexplainable nature of certain aspects of the Animalia Virus and thus the condition of Animalians and then made worse by the chaotic and vengeful nature of the present American government. It had made the present pandemic worse in the US and then complicated matters in terms of acknowledging its own election defeat and transitioning over toward the winner of the election. In this, Horizon Light’s medical director felt that even if a better future was coming… her country would still be profoundly weaker when it emerged as a price to pay for electing the present outgoing administration that seemed determined to burn everything to the ground for losing.
In this as Jamie prepared to go contact the various wings of the hospital and the doctors that ran each wing, she could only hope that some element of her assessment was wrong, even though she also knew those answers wouldn’t be known until January.