A Tobacco-Based COVID-19 Vaccine? Let's Hope It Doesn't Go Up In Smoke.

Hotair ^ | 05/16/2020 | Jazz Shaw

[SeekAndFind]

In the race to come up with a viable vaccine for the novel coronavirus, many groups around the world have been diving into the effort with a great sense of urgency. Various hospitals, universities and even bio-tech companies (some of whom have never produced a vaccine before) have gotten in on the action. But I’ll confess that I didn’t anticipate hearing about tobacco companies entering the competition. And yet, here we are. One of the biggest tobacco companies in the world, British American Tobacco, has somehow developed a vaccine that they say shows great promise and they’re ready to begin limited human testing. (Bloomberg)

An experimental Covid-19 vaccine developed by cigarette maker British American Tobacco Plc is poised to begin testing in humans.

Pre-clinical tests of the vaccine showed a positive immune response, the London-based tobacco company said Friday in a statement. The first phase of human trials could begin as soon as late June if authorized by drug regulators, BAT said.

Drugmakers from around the world have jumped into the vaccine race, with more than 100 candidates in development in the U.S., Europe, China and other regions. BAT rival Philip Morris International Inc. is also testing an immunization. Smoking cigarettes, the two companies’ main products, may raise the risk of severe Covid symptoms, according to the World Health Organization.

Okay, so it wasn’t the main tobacco producing company BAT who developed the vaccine. It was a one of their subsidiaries, Kentucky BioProcessing, that’s been doing the development work. The company is described as a “leading producer of recombinant proteins using tobacco plants… to express, extract and purify proteins for use as vaccines and other pharmaceuticals.”

Huh. Who knew? It appears that they’ve been in the field of creating vaccines for a while now. When I first saw the headline, I was reminded of some stories we’ve seen this year indicating that smokers may be less likely to contract COVID-19. There was even talk of treating patients with nicotine patches and the French began experimenting with that idea. But later studies suggested that may not be true. And habitual smokers wind up at greater risk if they end up becoming infected anyway because of their decreased lung capacity.

But none of the vaccine work being done at BAT appears to revolve around nicotine at all. In order to develop a vaccine, researchers need to generate specialized proteins that allow them to grow the test virus (in this case, Sars-CoV-2) in a fashion allowing it to be transferred into humans to stimulate an immune response. Traditionally this has been done using the cells of various animals, leading to concerns that other animal viruses might be “hitching a ride” in the vaccine and causing other problems downstream. But using plant cells has the potential to eliminate some of those possible issues. Apparently BAT has found that modified strains of the tobacco plant are highly effective in this process.

Hey, it sounds good to me. I don’t care if they’re using dandelions as long as it results in a viable, safe and effective vaccine. Now, who wants to be among the first people to volunteer to have this concoction injected into them as a test subject? I think I’ll leave that task to some of you younger, healthier (and preferably non-smoking) heroes.

[Paladin2]

DNA/RNA is like an open software language.

[Paladin2]

And O/S.

[GQuagmire]

A niece is working a Covid unit at a major hospital in MA.
They slapped nicotine patches on some of the patients.
Haven’t heard any particulars since then but hopefully she can share the results at some point

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

I read an article that said they were doing a study in France on that. They said smokers were infected at a significantly lower rate but if they were infected the outcome was generally worse.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: but if they were infected the outcome was generally worse.

Of course, smoking weakens your lungs, and the virus attacks the lungs.

[laplata]

That’s very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

[ocrp1982]

The French noticed that among their population which has a very significant population of people who smoke cigarettes that the number of smokers among the very sick was significantly smaller than what was expected.
The French many weeks ago began an experiment of putting nicotine patches on Wuhan Virus patients with good results.
Their epidemiologists noted that the receptors the Wuhan Virus uses to invade human cells are the EXACT SAME receptors that nicotine uses and noted that when nicotine is present it blocked the ability of the Wuhan Virus to enter cells via those receptors.
Do you think the Tobacco Companies didn’t make note of these findings? This was widely reported in Foreign Press. And, totally ignored by American Media. I know this because I read English versions of foreign media regularly.

[ocrp1982]

BTW, another thing that was noted earlier in this pandemic was blood types. It was noted and commented on by foreign media that the incidence of severe symptoms was almost completely absent among the population of Blood Type O.
In fact, it was noted that the vast majority of Asymptomatic peoples that tested positive for Wuhan Virus were people with blood type O.
And, once again, this was reported in foreign media but not mentioned at all in American mainstream media.
Supposedly America has a Free Press. But, in fact, America has an Agenda Driven Press that hides behind their reputation of a Free Press and conspires to push an Anti-American, Anti-Constitutional Agenda.

[House Atreides]

This is a very poorly written article. The tobacco plants only serve, in essence, as the manufacturing facility to produce their “designed” protein which is the antigen that will be the “working” part of their vaccine. It’s the antigen(s) that, once injected, trigger the body’s immune system to produce antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. There’s no nicotine in the vaccine.

[piasa]

British American Tobacco (BAT)

Well, that’s a familiar name.

Robert Levinson Former FBI agent Turned Private ...
www.billwarnerpi.com/2010/04/robert-levinson-former-fbi-agent-turned.html

Apr 20, 2010 · Levinson, who was working for a private security company hired by British American Tobacco (BAT), Levinson had taken a flight to Kish Island from Dubai as part of an investigation into the lucrative cigarette smuggling trade, into Iran.

[HollyB]

We’re the nicotine patches to help with withdrawals or as a Covid trial ?

[moovova]

I hope President Trump doesn’t say anything about a nicotine-based vaccine. Anti-smoking drug sales will plummet as people take up smoking again.

“See honey, I told you it was stupid to quit smoking.”

The press will accuse PDJT of causing lung cancer.

[GQuagmire]

Covid trial. I’ve read where nicotine or something to do with it reduces the overreaction of the immune system which causes cytokine storm(sp?) in pneumonia patients. Or something to that effect. I am no scientist lol

[HollyB]

I’ve read the same.