In a world still grappling with the fallout from hastily developed COVID-19 vaccines, the same scientific elite is now setting its sights on a new potential crisis: the bubonic plague.
Yes, the same Oxford scientists behind the controversial AstraZeneca COVID jab are now advancing efforts to create a vaccine for a disease that last caused mass devastation during the Middle Ages.
The Bubonic Plague, often referred to as the Black Death, is a serious infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. It is one of the three forms of plague (bubonic, septicemic, and pneumonic) and is the most common. The disease primarily affects humans and other mammals and is transmitted through the bite of an infected flea or through direct contact with infected animals.
This historic disease, which wiped out half of Europe’s population in the 1300s, has long been confined to the pages of history books.
Yet, claims of “superbug” strains emerging in distant corners of the world have reignited calls for mass inoculation efforts.
Predictably, climate change and the specter of bioterrorism are once again being trotted out as the justification for this latest round of vaccine development.
Telegraph.co.uk reported:
Scientists have called for the UK to add a Black Death jab to its stockpile as the risk of a superbug strain rises.
And now the Oxford team says a trial of its vaccine on 40 healthy adults which started in 2021 has yielded results which show it is safe and able to produce an immune response in people.
The man behind the trial, Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, told The Telegraph that the results of the trial are to be submitted to a journal for peer review within weeks, with further clinical trials expected.
He said: “There are no licensed plague vaccines in the UK. Antibiotics are the only treatment. There are some licensed vaccines in Russia.
“The risk in the UK is currently very low. Previous historical pandemics that had high mortality were associated with initiation from fleas on rodents but were driven by person to person spread.”
Government military scientists recently called for a vaccine to be approved and manufactured in bulk quantities because plague still exists in pockets of the world and has “potential for pandemic spread”.
Scientists at Porton Down’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) wrote in a paper in the journal NPJ Vaccines that vaccines need to be expedited “to prevent future disastrous plague outbreaks”.
This, they add, is compounded by the rising issue of antimicrobial resistance which is creating superbug strains of plague that cannot be easily treated by antibiotics.
Read more here.
These are the experts who created the AstraZeneca COVID jab.
Recall, Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has announced a global withdrawal of its Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, known as Vaxzevria, after acknowledging in court that the vaccine could cause rare but serious side effects.
The decision comes months after the company admitted for the first time in court documents that the vaccine could lead to Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TTS), a condition involving blood clots and low blood platelet counts.
AstraZeneca voluntarily withdrew its marketing authorization for Vaxzevria in the European Union, with the withdrawal taking effect on Tuesday following an application made on March 5, the Telegraph reported.
Despite the timing, AstraZeneca insists that the decision to pull the vaccine from the market was based on commercial reasons, specifically citing declining demand due to the availability of newer vaccines designed to combat emerging variants.
Read more:
AstraZeneca Announces Worldwide Withdrawal of COVID-19 Vaccine
The post Here We Go: Scientists Behind AstraZeneca COVID Jab Rush to Develop Bubonic Plague Vaccine as Fears of the Next Pandemic Loom appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.