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