The race for the Sars-Cov-2 coronavirus vaccine has already started, involving several research centers in Europe, the USA and CHINA.
The one in progress between the two major global competitors promises to add further confrontation to the many that already divide Beijing from Washington.
For weeks, Trump and Pompeo have not lost an opportunity to lay the responsibility for the "Chinese virus" (or "Wuhan") on the silences of Xi Jinping in the initial stages of the epidemic and on his inability to contain the spread of the virus out of the country.
Tough accusations, to which China has responded fully blaming the USA for producing the pandemic at home and then exporting it to China with some athletes over the World military games held in Wuhan last October.
At stake, on both sides, there is a need to capitalize on the emergency.
This is a requirement which on the American side responds to external and internal logic.
On the one hand, Trump sees a window of opportunity to deal a lethal blow to the international credibility of the Dragon, also in order to block the numerous commercial collaborations with friendly and allied countries (as in the case of 5G).
On the internal front, however, it has the purpose of prepare the nation for the huge losses it will soon have to endure due to the absence of a health system capable of handling the pandemic.
US healthcare is in fact the set of individual individual assistance packages provided on a contractual basis by insurance companies.
Obama's reform, remotely comparable to the public reforms of the old continent, partially covers only a small portion of the population.
Shifting attention from the domestic front to the entirely Chinese responsibility for contagion allows the administration to strengthen significantly, in this facilitated by the traditional gathering of its people, in times of emergency, around the Commander in Chief.
An advantage not a little, given the imminence of the next presidential election.
We will therefore have to get used to a tightening of the Sino-American confrontation in the coming months, as a reflection of the ups and downs of the curves of contagion and the difficulties encountered by the White House to face the emergency.
Trump's strategy also aims to prevent Beijing's propaganda, also conducted with "mask diplomacy" to capitalize on the containment of contagion internationally.
It is clear to the American president the danger that it will result in the consolidation of the "pearl necklace" strategy that has long characterized Xi Jinping's foreign policy to envelop the globe.
Here, then, that the clash between Washington and Beijing widens to involve research for the development of a vaccine, the only tool capable of ensuring flock immunity.
The president made it clear, judging by the tone in which he announced last March 16 that, "I'm pleased1 to report that vaccine candidate has begun the phase 1 clinical trial. This is one of the fastest vaccine development launches in history. We are racing to develop anti viral therapies and the treatments. And we had some promising results, early results, but promising, to reduce the severity and duration of the symptoms. I have to say that our government is prepared to do whatever it takes, whatever it takes we are doing. "
An uphill road, which will not allow immediate results in the short term. For this reason too, the president has tried to secure the exclusivity with a billion dollars2 of the product that the German CureVac is developing, at the moment the most promising.
The American effort, as stated by the American defense secretary, Mark Esper, also involves the US Army Medical Command of Camp Detrick and the American military laboratory, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research3.
From the Associated Press4 It also learns that in Seattle, the National Institutes of Health has initiated, in coordination with the Massachusetts-based modern biotechnology company, an initial experimental phase to test a vaccine involving 45 healthy adult volunteers, aged 18 to 55 years.
A first start that bodes well, although, according to the declarations of Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, it will take at least 18 months to have an effective serum.
Much less than what Xi Jinping promises will have to go through to get a product Made in China, whose realization has been entrusted toAcademy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS) directed by General Chen Wei5.
The role that the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the Beijing Armed Forces, has played since the beginning of the emergency has been crucial; just think of the 10 doctors and paramedics sent to Wuhan in competition with local hospitals.
The city, among other things, since September 2016, has been the headquarters of the joint logistical support headquarters, which has overseen the distribution of medical supplies for military medical personnel as well as the transport of the necessary supplies to the 11 million inhabitants of the capital.
General Chen, 54, is a scientist, epidemiologist and virologist very experienced in the development of recombinant vaccines, that is, those who use a virus or a harmless bacterium to introduce the genetic material of the pathogen into the body and thus build theimmunityà.
Its role was also recognized in relief operations during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and in those related to the development of a vaccine during the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
During the previous SARS emergency of 2002-2003 (for which - remember - a vaccine was never produced), the scientist distinguished herself with the creation of a nasal spray to protect health workers, which at the time proved very useful, as it has been recently in Wuhan, where none of the military has been infected (news, however, not confirmed).
Now - announces CCTV, China's largest television network - AMMS has been authorized to start a clinical trial, and there are already those who swear that the results are very close.
On the main Chinese social media platform, WeChat, images circulate showing the scientist in the act of injecting herself with a possible vaccine.
A sign that there is a lot of determination, but also that the pressure with which the Central Military Commission, led by Xi Jinping himself, looks closely at the work of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences and would not accept a failure.
