Amazon’s Secret Common Cold Project
2 min read
Interesting line I noted many months ago in an NY Times article about a new book about pandemics and epidemics. It takes about Coronavirus strain OC43. It’s responsible for a heck of a lot of common colds along with some other Coronavirus strains.
Coronavirus strain OC43 is interesting because it causes many common colds, but also because it was specifically 1 of the 4 Coronavirus strains that Vaxart tested to see if it’s vaccine was cross-reactive! Might imply Vaxart is targeting the common cold vax market because or positioning its vax as a common cold cure. Coronaviruses cause 30% of colds. That’s a lot.
Also very interesting given the Army’s vax program (where CMO Cummings is from) is hoping to cure the common cold w/their Covid vax and because Amazon has a years-long secretive common cold vax program. I’d imagine Amazon’s vax program would love to have a vax that can stop 30% of the colds caused by Coronaviruses and in pill form since vax pills could uniquely be sold+shipped by a virtual pharmacy like Amazon PillPack/Amazon Pharmacy that doesn’t have stores where they can compete in the immunizations segment w/retail pharmacies (CVS…) Highly speculative but you never know. Amazon isn’t stupid. No one announces a common cold vax program in early march 2020 when the stock market was crashing and every company in the world announced a Covid vax program. I believe Amazon was wordsmithing and calling their Covid vax program a common cold vax program to hide its true nature. Given that Coronaviruses cause 30% of colds, they just wordsmithed.
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