User Tools

Site Tools


eternity:virus

Mystery Flaw #5: Further information

For more information on the bioweapon trial and virus, here are extracts from the writeup the first player to study the data received.

Your world changes.

There are spreadsheets of dates, demographics, results. There are statistical analyses of deaths. There are logs of clinic visits, letters from Station Green about quarantine, autopsy reports, and a programme that models statistics of population size, resistance and innoculation to calculate the rate of contagion and population burden of disease. There are documents on pathology, epidemiology, vaccines. There are references to other studies, and to the funding. Although there is correspondence with Station Green, it doesn't seem like these are reports from Station Green in the most part. It doesn't seem like the data is coming from controlled lab experiments at all. This a large statistical analysis. The data set is too large to be a series of experiments at Station Green. It has to be planet-wide, or it has to incorporate data from elsewhere.

Through it all one key phrase recurs and recurs:

PHASE IV 'PAR-AC3' TRIAL: B-EXAGORA

You're in a trial. b-Exagora is a real-time, real-life epidemiological trial of a virus that is causing disease, replicating, spreading, killing. And you're living in it.

[…]

It's a virus, a retrovirus. It's been tested extensively before ever being deployed on b-Exagora. There's banks of research on its development. You get a feel for the pathogenesis of this illness: viral replication in lymphoid tissue throughout the body leads to the myriad of symptoms you've heard. You note that there's no mention of agents that block replication. You skim through statistical analyses of time to endpoints: first symptoms; first episode of debilitating illness; time to death, broken down by comorbidities and age group. It's airborne. Core antigen peaks at three months. Immune response is ineffective in the long-term as lymphoid tissue necroses. Serum antibody levels correspond poorly with survival. Positive prognostic factors are all relatively weak. Great. Mortality: 98.3% over three years. Even better. Here are studies showing its resistance to the usual antiretrovirals, the ineffectiveness of more niche integrase inhibitors. Just fantastic: at least there's some hope in a research line of developing a specific reverse transcriptase inhibitor that's more active than all the others, although currently still ineffectual.

The information that's missing: exactly how contagious PAR-AC3 is, and therefore how fast it will spread through a population, was speculated but not demonstrated. That's the purpose of the b-Exagora trial.

[…]

You note the Phase III trials. This has been in development a long time. It's been an expensive project. This is nearly ready, in fact, to be released on an unwitting population.

[…]

So, a cure. Where's the theory? Where are the in vivo experiments? Why is there no reference to a cure?

The truth is bleak. There isn't one. And no first steps have been taken. In fact, creating a cure to PAR-AC3 will be a monumental effort. You'll need a dedicated team, and not a small one. You'll need equipment. You'll need subjects. You'll need funding. You'll need fucking years.

But there's a vaccine. [Some samples were obtained by players] during the latest mortuary raid, the one in which they reclaimed Zhou Ba's cybernetics without the hassle of providing 70kg of cake. The vaccine is pre-exposure, two antigens, with very low hypersensitivity reaction rates and with high efficacy demonstrated through multiple trials. The trial so far on b-Exagora is further evidence that it works. Not a single person who has been vaccinated has become infected. And Greco corroborates the mortality rate, and has meticulously documented the spread of the virus and the clusters of syndromes. The prisoners' decline and deaths have been documented, in neat rows of VIRAL TITRE, % BASOPHILS, CD16 COUNT, SUBJECT #, DATE OF DEATH.

There's enough information here to guide a very decent attempt at producing the vaccine. […]

It's too late for you, though. You've contracted PAR-AC3, at the pleasure of the Elysian Government.

One document only provides evidence as to why.

…for deployment in a variety of civilian-based operations, to maximise fatalies where direct action would lead to unacceptable losses…

You've contracted PAR-AC3, at the pleasure of the Elysian Government, to help the final stages of their bioweapon testing. You wonder which innocent people the bioweapon is destined to be released on. You don't need to wonder for very long.

eternity/virus.txt · Last modified: 2017/06/12 03:02 by gm_amy