BESIDE THE ROAD — NEW BASED-ON-TRUE-CRIME SERIES BOOK #4

Dead Men Do Tell Tales

New Book Release – June 2020 – by Garry Rodgers, DyingWords Digital & Print Media Canada

Warning! Beside The Road is based on a true crime story. It’s not embellished or abbreviated. Explicit descriptions of the crime scenes, factual dialogue, real forensic procedures, and actual police investigation, interview and interrogation techniques are portrayed. Some names, times and locations have been changed for privacy concerns and commercial purposes. 

Prologue

He lay beside the road. He lay beside the road as dawn’s first streaks smeared the eastern sky and the horizon’s weak rays cast frail shadows through early mist. Songbirds introduced the day—while an owl’s screech signed off the night—as he lay on his back in death’s putrid stench… discarded and dumped down a backwoods bank beside the road.

Light spread through the rural woods where a poorly-paved path cut a meandering trail high above him, shielding his corpse from passing view. The sun unhurriedly appeared. It evaporated the overnight dew that formed in early summer, and the temperature began to rise from a tolerable chill. Predictably, the sun climbed the cloudless sky towards another afternoon’s peak of uncomfortable heat.

By nine, the sun angle was right for direct beams to touch his torso through the picket-fence gaps in roadside trees vertically rising from the steeply-sloped bank. A stand of coastal Douglas fir, native to British Columbia’s central Vancouver Island, guarded his body while a canopy of Western red cedars sheltered his cadaver from the direct sear of mid-day heat. The forest floor was a pad of thorns and ferns and moss and sticks and leaves and sticky needles that slowly deteriorated along with him as part of the universal plan.

Hour by hour, as the world turned and time passed, intermittent sunlight radiated him into a zipper-like pattern. Low luminosity left a softening effect on his exposed skin while solar gain from higher scales scorched him with a dryness that turned his trunk zebra-striped in a way few deceased people present. He had a piano-key pattern and a rarity produced by alternating spectrums of electromagnetism.

Day by day, as the Earth evolved and entropy progressed, he became a unique specter—part putrefaction where light hit him low and part mummification where diffusing blows of afternoon rays parched his flesh.

He was clothed. Partly clothed, that is, with his feet in shoes and his privates in shorts. His singlet, or wife-beater muscle shirt, bunched about his upper chest. His head was bare and so were his arms. His hair was stringy strands of brownish sludge that trapped the decomposing flesh and fats flowing from his scalp. And, his left hand reached as if grasping for help while his right helplessly crooked behind his back.

His face was mostly exposed to the bone and his eyes were gone. His cranium sucked in the sunlight and left him with a bare-skull appearance where his teeth—a distinctly different dentition—gave a half-snarl and a half-sneer similar to a pirate’s ghastly flag.

He had a name. He once had a family, and he once kept some friends. He once had a childhood and he laughed and he played and he schooled and he fooled around like anyone passing through their youth and into their adulthood would. But, his life was extinguished and his consciousness had parted ways with his physical entity—his remains left on the slope beside the road to break down.

Now, he was a medical mess with nature’s creatures consuming his corpse. Insects cycled through their growth stages and carried on the continuous loop of evolution. Forest vermin feasted on their share of his disarticulating decay while circling birds apprehensively watched for their chance at a piece of the putrefied pie.

He had a past. He had a past not to be proud of that caused him to be in his present condition—a dead and discarded human body that lay in silent stink beside the road.

Chapter One — Tuesday, July 9th – 1:10 pm

Leaky Lewis sent me a text. body beside the road. prob foul play. can u attend?
I texted Leaky back. What road, ffs? There’s a thousand roads in this town.
Leaky replied. o sorry. nanaimo lakes rd. approx 6 mi west near gogos sawmill.
I typed. Helpful. Are you there now?
He responded. no. im in council meeting. thats why text and not call.
I returned. So who has the scene?
Leaky pecked. uniforms got it. forensics en route. i called coroner. she’ll meet u.

——

Leaky Lewis was my boss at our Serious Crimes Section. He was junior to me in service, but that was okay. I preferred investigating murders more than stretching budgets and scrambling resources like Leaky had to do. And, this case of the body beside the road stretched and scrambled our budget and resources to the max. We used almost every investigation tool and technique available before we finally solved the most baffling and bizarre homicide file of my long detective career.

Leaky’s name was Jim. Jim Lewis. He’s a great guy, but had a serious incontinence problem with post-urinary drip. That’s why the nickname. Leaky couldn’t venture far from the trough without Depends, but he made sure we had everything needed to do our job.

By “our” I mean the seven-person squad tasked with investigating violent persons offenses that happened around the Nanaimo area. We’re located on central Vancouver Island in British Columbia right across from the craziness and congestion of the City of Vancouver. Nanaimo has Canada’s mildest year-round weather. I’d been here on the southwest coast for years and had hit my best-before date. During that time, I’d seen a lot of serious crimes because Nanaimo had an extraordinarily high homicide rate.

Leaky looked after our entire plainclothes unit. Besides the Serious Crimes bunch, he supervised the Commercial Crime unit, Sex Offenses, Forensics, Drug Squad, and one poor prick plagued with frauds and bad plastic. Leaky also oversaw the secret squirrels in our intelligence branch and two notoriously bad-behaved boys on the Street Crew.

——

I pulled up to the crime scene on Nanaimo Lakes Road in my unmarked Explorer. Like Leaky texted, it was just over six miles west of the city limits near a small sawmill run by industrious Slavic immigrants called the Gogo family. There were two police cruisers parked on the right-hand shoulder, the north side, with their red and blues flashing. Two other vehicles sat along the shoulder. One was our forensic unit’s mobile shop. The other belonged to Global TV’s roaming cameraman.

A uniformed cop with a paddle-board stop sign directed traffic around the entourage. She pointed to the left lane and gave me a “get-going” motion. I didn’t recognize her. Likely a new recruit. I hit my grille lights and she startled. Then, she smiled and pointed to the steep bank beside the road.

I parked, got out, and walked toward the marked car at the front of the pack. Already I could smell it. It was that unforgettable stench—somewhere between reeking ammonia in ripe rotten eggs and the putrid aroma of deeply-decayed roadkill. It was the smell one never mistakes.

A senior officer guarded the scene. He’d been with the patrol division for a long time. The patrolman introduced me to the stop-sign gal. I was right, she was a brand-new hire.

“What’s happening?” I was matter-of-fact.

“Body down the bank.” The old harness bull thumbed to the thick stand of Douglas fir trees rooted to the slope and standing tall. Western red cedars loomed overhead. “Been there a while from the look and smell.”

“What do you think?” I stood at the edge. It was loose gravel beside the road’s crumbling pavement. I did not want to slip and take a tumble.

“At first I thought it was a deer.” He scrunched his nose. I could see the young officer kept her distance. “That’s what the guy who reported it thought, too. He was riding his bike up the grade and caught a whiff. So, he stopped and looked over and saw his dead deer wore running shoes.”

“Witness guy still around?” I looked about. The only civilian seemed to be the TV man rolling film.

“No.” The patrolman shook his head. “I got my cadet to take his statement. Gotta start somewhere, right? Then we sent him on his way.”

“Great, thanks.” I paused to look around and take in the scene.

It was bright sunshine and getting uncomfortably warm. The early afternoon sun was south-southwest and high enough to shine over the bank and flood its light on the slope. The site was at the leading edge of a tight left-hand bend, and the road was sharply inclined toward the west. It led to a double-S curve with a cautionary slow advisory sign—not the sort of place to safely pull off.

The traffic was light. A loaded logging truck approached and followed the young officer’s direction. It chugged up the grade and disappeared through the curve. A smaller silver SUV arrived. Instead of bypassing as the officer indicated, the SUV came to a stop behind my Explorer. I saw the new cop frown as the driver put it in park and shut off the engine.

I knew who it was. The door opened and a silver-haired lady with a silver clipboard matching her mane got out. Honey Phelps, our coroner, walked toward me.

“Hi, Honey. Imagine meeting you here.” I smiled. Honey. I love the name. It perfectly suited her. She’d been with the Coroners Service for years, and I’d worked with her at countless death scenes. She was always the consummate professional but with a black humor tinge.

“Is that you?’ Honey whiffed the air like a bear. “Or is that my client?”

“Probably a bit of both.” I chuckled. “I haven’t had a look yet. Waited for you to get here.”

“Looks like Forensics beat me.” She nodded toward the big rig that looked somewhere between a SWAT team’s truck and an indie rock band’s Winnebago.

“Yeah. I think they’re inside suiting up.” I motioned toward the Forensic Identification Section vehicle. “Let’s go have a chat with them.”

Honey looked at my Explorer and then at me. “You alone? No Harry today?”

I grinned. “Nope. I’m batching it. She’s tied up in a court case.” I referred to my usual partner, Sheryl Henderson who we called ‘Harry’ after the Bigfoot in the movie Harry and the Hendersons. Sheryl was a large lady with large hair and an even larger personality.

Honey and I walked up to the Forensics vehicle just as Sergeant Cheryl Hunter stepped down. Her understudy, Matt Halfyard, stayed inside. We called him Eighteen Inches.

Cheryl was dressed in her bunny suit. It’s the white Tyvek coveralls that CSI people constantly wear. I’m sure she slept in that thing.

“What do you think?” I asked Cheryl much the same thing I’d asked the senior patrolman. It was usually a pretty good opener.

“Not sure yet.” Cheryl had her digital Canon ready. Matt was loading a video camera. The first thing Forensics always do is film the scene before they enter it. That step was non-negotiable, and the guarding officers made sure no one went near the body before Forensics began their painstaking thorough task of recording the overall scene. Examining the body beside the road would follow.

“I’m not sure what to think.” Cheryl was always careful with opinions and cautious with conclusions. She was like all forensic examiners. They work with facts. Not fables. It was the nature of the beast.

“I haven’t been down to the body yet.” Cheryl looked to her left and over the bank. “It’s about twenty-five feet downslope and looks like it’s hung up against tree trunks. I have no idea if he… it looks like a he from the size and style of running shoes… that’s all I can really make out from here… if he was hit by a vehicle and sent flying over the bank or if he was driven out here and dumped.”

I looked around. The TV camera guy looked back through his viewfinder. “Doesn’t look like a suicide type of scene.”

Cheryl and Honey agreed. We’d all seen a lot of suicide scenes and this one didn’t fit. My gut feeling said dumpsite.

“Let’s just take this step-by-step till we see what we’ve got.” Cheryl was the voice of reason. “One thing’s for sure. This isn’t a recent scene. From what I can see above the shoes is bare-bones with putrefied flesh partly attached.”

“Been here a while, then.” Honey observed.

“Yeah.” Cheryl looked up at the sun. “But it doesn’t take long in this weather.”

“We’ll figure it out.” Honey smiled. “Let’s have a better look at who’s down there beside the road.”

*   *   *

Beside The Road — Book 4 in the Based-On-True-Crime Series by Garry Rodgers is just released  — June 2020 — and now downloadable from these leading EBook retailers:

 

 

 

 

THE TRUE STORY ABOUT WHO REALLY STOLE JFK’S BRAIN

United States President John F. Kennedy’s assassination is the mother of all conspiracy theories. There’s been more BS, crap and craziness written about JFK’s murder than all the stuff ever spewed out of Donald Trump’s yap. However, there’s one bizarre angle to the JFK murder story that’s true. Someone actually stole JFK’s preserved brain from the National Archives, and the real mystery is who.

The facts surrounding the JFK Assassination are fairly straightforward. On November 22nd, 1963 the 35th President of the United States was fatally shot while riding in an open limousine through Dealy Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. Three rounds were fired. The first missed. The second struck Kennedy in the upper back, exited through his throat and seriously wounded Governor John Connally who sat in front of the Commander-in-Chief. The third bullet hit President Kennedy in the back of his head and killed him.

Despite what conspiracy theorists want to believe, Lee Harvey Oswald—acting alone—triggered all three shots. Oswald was a seriously-troubled young man employed at the Texas School Depository building where he fired from the sixth floor—now known as the “sniper’s nest”. Lee Oswald used an inexpensive, military-surplus rifle he obtained through mail order and left it behind when he fled the scene.

It’s simply a case of a lone nut with a cheap rifle from a tall building or a crazy who brought his gun to work and shot the President. Oswald then killed a Dallas police officer who street-checked him and was later captured hiding in a movie theater. Then, Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered—fatally shot by another nut-job named Jack Ruby. This occurred in the basement of the Dallas PD headquarters in what was the biggest breach of security in the history of policing.

JFK’s missing brain story began at his autopsy at the U.S. Navy hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. Before getting to that strange-but-true tale, it’s important to know why the autopsy was done near Washington, D.C. and not in Dallas, Texas where the murder took place.

The bullets struck John Fitzgerald Kennedy at 12:30 p.m. He was in the emergency ward at Parkland Hospital within ten minutes where doctors hopelessly tried to save his life. They declared Kennedy dead at 1:00 p.m. and his body remained in the ER while authorities frantically tried to figure out what to do.

In 1963, there was no federal law regarding murdering the President of the United States. This was state jurisdiction under the Texas Penal Code, and the body possession / medical examination responsibility fell to the Dallas County coroner, Dr. Earl Rose. Rose worked at Parkland hospital and was nearby when Kennedy expired. Upon the declaration of death, Dr. Rose prepared to do a forensic autopsy which he was imminently qualified to do.

“No *#@$*#& way, Dr. Rose,” said the Kennedy team. “We’re getting the *bleep* out of Dallas right *#@$*#& now and Jack Kennedy’s coming with us.” A heated argument and physical scuffle arose as Dr. Rose blocked the door—backed-up by a Dallas police officer and a Justice of the Peace. On the Kennedy side were the Secret Service, led by Agent Roy Kellerman, and the president’s chief aid, enforcer and boyhood friend, Kenny O’Donnell.

Complicating matters was that about-to-be-sworn-in President Lyndon Johnson was terrified of a plot to kill them all. He, too, desperately wanted to get back to Washington’s safety. Air Force One sat ready at Love field which could have quickly swept Johnson away.

Except for one problem. Jackie Kennedy refused to leave her now-deceased husband in Dallas. She would not get on that plane without Jack, and there was no way Johnson wanted to be seen “abandoning a beautiful widow”. LBJ “et al” quickly worked a deal.

Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade got involved. He knew the law and knew it was an offense under the Coroner Act to remove a body from the State of Texas without the presiding coroner’s permission. That was not happening. Dr. Rose wasn’t about to give up the murder-victim-of-the-century, and D.A. Wade wanted to get out of the mess. Wade looked up the penalty for illegally removing (stealing) a body from Texas jurisdiction.

The fine was $100.00. Kenny O’Donnell had it in his wallet and forked over the hundred bucks to the J.P. With that, the president’s body was out the Parkland door, onto the plane and headed for home. That left the question of where to do the autopsy on the deceased U.S. President.

The new Johnson Administration thought it would be a nice touch to let the grieving widow decide. Jackie Kennedy, in a shocked and sickened state, thought that because “Jack was a Naval man” the autopsy should be done at the Navy facility in Bethesda. It seemed like a fitting touch.

President Kennedy’s body arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital at around 8:00 p.m. EST. To say the scene was a circus or a gong show was apt. Two Naval doctors with pathology—not forensic—experience led the medical team. Once they realized gunshot wounds were out of their wheelhouse, they brought in a third doctor who’d seen and treated a lot of battlefield wounds.

Between them, they bungled and fumbled through JFK’s autopsy. Complicating matters and adding stress to a stressful situation, they performed before a total audience of thirty-two (32) individuals who came and went throughout the four-hour procedure. Some were assistants who had a reasonable role. Others were mere spectators who had absolutely no business being there.

Critics look at JFK’s postmortem exam as being the worst forensic autopsy ever conducted. That’s not entirely fair, as they mostly got it right. They concluded that JFK was shot twice. One in the back—the other in the head. Both bullets originated from behind and above the presidential limousine and (from later lab testing) both bullets came from Oswald’s 6.5 mm Italian Carcano rifle.

What they didn’t get right was the correct anatomical placement of the bullet entrance points on JFK’s body. They used flexible and non-precise reference points to place the wounds. This led to enormous speculation about shooter numbers and sniper locations. It’ll probably never end.

What the autopsy team did get precise was information about injuries to the president’s brain. The JFK autopsy report has been publicly available for decades. There’s no secret there. You can download it from the internet, and you can find the actual autopsy photos if you know where to look. Here’s what the pathologists had to say about JFK’s brain:

Supplementary Report of Autopsy Number A63-272 President John F. Kennedy

Gross Description of Brain

Following formalin fixation, the brain weighs 1500 grams. The right cerebral hemisphere is found to be markedly disrupted. There is a longitudinal laceration of the right hemisphere which is para-sagittal in position approximately 2.5 cm to the right of the midline which extends from the tip of the occipital lobe posteriorly to the tip of the frontal lobe anteriorly. The base of the laceration is situated approximately 4.5 cm below the vertex in the white matter. There is considerable loss of cortical substance above the base of the laceration, particularly in the parietal lobe. The margins of this laceration are at all points jagged and irregular, with additional lacerations extending in varied directions and for varying distances from the main laceration. In addition, there is a laceration of the corpus callosum extending from the genu to the tail. Exposed in this latter laceration are the interiors of the right lateral and third ventricles.

When viewed from the vertex, the left cerebral hemisphere is intact. There is marked engorgement of meningeal blood vessels of the left temporal and frontal regions with considerable associated subarachnoid hemorrhage. The gyri and sulci over the left hemisphere are of essentially normal size and distribution. Those on the right are too fragmented and distorted for a satisfactory description.

When viewed from the basilar aspect, the disruption of the right cortex is again obvious. There is a longitudinal laceration of the mid-brain through the floor of the third ventricle just behind the optic chiasm and mammillary bodies. This laceration particularly communicates with an oblique 1.5 cm tear through the left cerebral peduncle. There are irregular superficial lacerations over the basilar aspects of the left temporal and frontal lobes.

The supplementary autopsy report goes on to describe cross-section slides taken for microscopic inspection. It notes that no brain irregularities were identified outside of the catastrophic gunshot damage. The report also states that autopsy materials including photos were “delivered by hand to Rear Admiral George W. Buckley. MC, USN, White House Physician” who was President Kennedy’s personal doctor.

In layman’s terms, the JFK autopsy report describes massive trauma to the right side of the president’s brain. Nearly half of it was gone—blown away by the rifle bullet which can be graphically seen in Frame 313 of the infamous Zapruder film that captured the assassination. The other half was seriously damaged by the impact’s shock.

Conspiracy theorists like to destroy the JFK autopsy proceedings by pointing out what they see as inconsistencies like the report stating the brain weighed 1,500 grams. “Hang on,” the CTs say. “There’s lots of information on the net that says a typical adult human male’s brain weighs around 1,400 to 1,500 grams. So, JFK’s brain must have still been mostly intact… or, better yet, replaced at the autopsy to cover up something super-sinister like the shooter from the Grassy Knoll.”

Breathe easy, Conspiracy Theorists. The report clearly stipulates “following fixation in formalin” which is standard autopsy protocol. It’s not easy to cross-section a fresh brain and make thin slices for histology slides. Once a brain soaks in formalin (a formaldehyde-based solution) it becomes rubbery and workable. The process typically takes two to three weeks.

Formalin fixing amplifies tissue weight. It makes perfect sense that part of JFK’s brain fixed in formalin would weigh the same as a complete and non-fixed mass. Nothing to see here, CTs. Maybe keep on something like how Castro and the Mob cooperated to place multiple assassins around Dealy and let them pack up their guns then escape without evidence.

No, the real mystery in the JFK case is what actually happened to the president’s formalin-fixed brain after the autopsy, and how it disappeared from a locked vault at the United States National Archives in Washington, D.C.

John Kennedy’s body was released from the Bethesda morgue in the early morning hours of November 23, 1963. A funeral home team did the best they could to prepare the body for viewing. Privately, the Kennedy family saw the post-autopsy corpse, but the casket was never opened to the public.

President Kennedy’s burial took place on November 25th. Millions around the world watched the procession on TV, and many thousands lined the route from the U.S. Capitol to Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac River in Virginia. Here, the fallen president was laid to rest—temporarily.

Back to the missing brain. There’s no transfer date on their report, but it’s likely the autopsy doctors gave the brain and related histology evidence to Dr. Buckley around the middle of December 1963. The brain and related tissue couldn’t be interred with Kennedy’s body along with the burial. So, that presented the issue of what to do with them, including the grotesque autopsy photos. The Kennedy family abhorred the thought of this gruesome material getting into public hands and being put on display like a side-show.

National Archive records confirmed they received the John Fitzgerald Kennedy autopsy materials in February of 1965. They were released to the Archives by Robert F. Kennedy’s signature, and that included the brain which was contained in a stainless steel receptacle. The effects were logged into the archives and stayed in safekeeping. That was until October 31st, 1966 when someone noticed President Kennedy’s brain and other tissues had vanished. Yes, it was Halloween, and someone had stolen them.

Meanwhile—unknown to the public—the Kennedy family prepared for President Kennedy’s permanent resting place. Somewhere in 1965, the family had Jack Kennedy exhumed and stored in a secure and secret location while they re-designed and built the Arlington grave site. They moved the grave slightly away from the original location and built a solid base that could withstand the millions of visitors who visited the shrine. That included a modern, natural gas eternal flame to replace the old and hastily-built propane torch along with granite flagstones brought in from New England.

In the middle of the night on March 14th, 1967 the Kennedy family re-interred JFK’s body in the new facility. Present were Jackie Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Edward (Ted) Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson. Also re-interred were the two Kennedy children who died at birth and were moved from their Massachusetts burial spots to be placed with their father.

Nothing was said about the missing brain for years—publicly. The vast majority of citizens never knew it was gone, let alone being stolen. That cat came out of the bag during The JFK Assassination Records Review Board proceedings that took place between 1992 and 1998 which were only recently released under the 2016 Freedom of Information Act.

There, in the files of the 1977 Rockefeller Commission, was the answer as to who stole President Kennedy’s brain. This commission was the first official inquiry after the Warren Commission, and it formed to quell conspiracy rumors. Unfortunately, it probably did more harm than good just as what happened during the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations that concluded President Kennedy’s assassination was “probably the result of a conspiracy”. They based this erroneous conclusion solely on the bogus interpretation of a Dallas PD dispatch recording that allegedly caught four shots rather than three.

The Rockefeller Commission took evidence from United States Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall and questioned him about the brain’s whereabouts. This is what Marshall told the commissioners:

“Robert Kennedy obtained and disposed of these materials himself, without permission or informing anyone else. He was concerned that these materials would be placed on public display and wished to dispose of them to eliminate such a possibility.”

No one will ever truly know where JFK’s brain is today. The most likely scenario is it was buried along with the president’s re-interred body in Arlington Cemetery. But, one thing’s for sure. It was Bobby Kennedy who stole it.

WHY IT TAKES SO LONG TO MAKE A CORONAVIRUS VACCINE

We wish it would just go away—this stupid Coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic. You’d think with today’s medical knowledge and advanced technology all it would take is leading scientists around the world to come together, snap their fingers, and immediately slop-out an effective vaccine. Then, we could get back to the “Old Normal”.

Not so fast. There’s nothing quick or easy about making an effective Covid-19/Coronavirus inoculation.

When this thing started, I wrote a post titled Just How Deadly is Novel Coronavirus and Covid-19? Like a lot of pieces, I looked for an intriguing subject, researched it to understand the basics, then wrote it to share with others. Creating a Coronavirus/Covid-19 vaccine is an evolving issue, and I wanted to know more about how long it will be before a preventive treatment is widely available.

An article on my HuffPost feed satisfied my curiosity, and it’ll inform you, too, about when we can expect an effective coronavirus vaccine. Unfortunately, the answer is no time soon. There are good reasons why it takes so long to make a vaccine. Rather than writing new content about this complicated issue, I’m sharing what I received from the Huff.

—   —   —

As of the end of April, 2020, the World Health Organization was tracking 71 coronavirus vaccines in preclinical trials, with five additional candidates already in clinical trials. Given how recently the COVID-19 pandemic began spreading, it might seem promising that there’s already a lot of activity on the immunization front.

With so many potential vaccines in testing, you also may wonder why medical experts say it will take at least 12 to 18 months before one is ready to go. If a coronavirus vaccine did make it to market on such a timetable, it would actually be the fastest turnaround in history. Currently, that record belongs to the mumps vaccine, which was approved for use in just four years back in the 1960s. For Ebola, a vaccine took five years to develop.

More commonly, the development of a vaccine takes eight to 10 years. Can a COVID-19 vaccine be created any faster? There’s certainly hope, but no certainty.

“I’d say the 12 to 18 months that’s been bandied about by some experts is realistic, but it’s [also] optimistic,” said James Cutrell, director of the infectious disease fellowship program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. “It is based on the assumption that each phase of trials goes according to plan, with an optimistic time frame at each of those stages.”

Here’s what goes into each phase of developing a vaccine.

We often think of vaccines as treatments for illness, but they’re not exactly that, said Kelvin Lee, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Delaware and director of the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals. Vaccines are given to people who are well to keep them from getting sick.

“It’s very different from developing medicine where someone is ill and you are trying to make them better. In a healthy population, you don’t want the vaccine to have negative consequences,” he said.

First, Lee said, researchers will study the virus and attempt to determine which type of vaccine may work best.

Microscopic view of Coronavirus, a pathogen that attacks the respiratory tract.

There are several kinds of vaccines. Some have a tiny, weakened bit of live virus, which triggers a protective immune response in your body but does not cause the actual illness. Some contain inactive virus that creates a similar response in the body. And some utilize genetically engineered RNA or DNA, which carries “directions” to make the type of protein that can prevent the virus from binding to our cells and making us ill.

Once researchers decide which vaccine route they think will work best, they get to testing.

“This is where time really comes into play,” Lee said. “Even after you do lab tests to make sure it works in the proverbial petri dish, in many cases vaccines will undergo tests in animals to ensure that it’s going to be safe for humans and has the desired response. And then, where it really starts to take time is in the human clinical trials.”

To roll out a vaccine requires a lot of safety testing. During Phase 1, researchers take a small number of healthy volunteers and test the vaccine for serious side effects, Cutrell explained.

Phase 2 involves smaller studies looking at efficacy, he said. This includes figuring out the best dosage of the vaccine, the scheduling of dosages if you need multiple ones, and more. Scientists will consider whether the vaccine still appears safe enough and whether the immune response or antibody buildup is great enough to warrant moving on to additional clinical studies.

In Phase 3, you will see larger field studies.

“You would take a susceptible population, vaccinate some while having a control group, and monitor the effect over time and see if there’s any difficulty,” Cutrell said.

Here, researchers may look for common, short-term side effects and at what dosages those side effects pop up.

“All that has to be done first, and then if Phase 3 shows the vaccine is safe and effective, that’s when you’d look at licensing,” Cutrell said.

Even after you have a working vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration, it still takes time to mass-produce and distribute it across the country.

The goal is to vaccinate huge numbers of people, “so you then develop immunity in the community that would protect against larger outbreaks,” Cutrell said.

Testing and monitoring ― essentially Phase 4 ― continue even after the vaccine is generally available because it takes time to ensure safety, Lee said. “You don’t know if something bad is going to happen a month later, two months later, a year later.”

Common side effects of vaccines include redness and pain at the site of injection and maybe a low-grade fever; side effects like seizures or allergic reactions are extremely rare. But the bottom line is that scientists and doctors aim to develop a vaccine where the protective benefits far outweigh the risks.

While it’s hard to say when researchers will have a viable vaccine, there are a few factors that could speed up the timeline for this coronavirus vaccine. Traditional approaches to creating vaccines ― like the use of chicken eggs ― are proven but not necessarily speedy.

“You have some newer technologies that some companies are trying to leverage, where they were already prepared to respond to a pandemic,” said Lee. “You can shorten some of that discovery and early development timeline.”

Newer biotechnology-based methods, sometimes called “cell culture methods,” could make for more rapid development, he said. Additionally, with a pandemic circling the world, American researchers are hardly alone.

“You’ve got private companies and scientists trying to work together on the vaccine. That collaboration can certainly help accelerate the timeline,” Lee said. “Scientists will still want to minimize risks and ensure the safest possible rollout of a vaccine. “But given the outbreak globally and the impact it’s having, I can imagine there are ways to design trials to accelerate testing,”

There could also be an unconventional study design for the coronavirus vaccine, according to a new report published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. In place of traditional Phase 3 trials, volunteers at low risk of developing a severe form of COVID-19 ― healthy people without chronic conditions in their 20s, for instance ― might opt in for a “human challenge study.” They could be exposed to the coronavirus, monitored closely and given the best care.

This type of study would involve fewer participants and could be done in less time than a traditional Phase 3. Of course, the idea would need to be rigorously discussed beforehand as ethics rules generally forbid deliberately infecting human beings with a serious disease.

Besides vaccine trials, researchers are testing potential treatments for COVID-19. Instead of preventing the disease, these aim to make sick people well again.

“One of the treatments that has gotten a lot of attention is remdesivir, but the data available so far is fairly limited,” Cutrell said. No trials comparing use of the antiviral drug against a control group have been published so far. That said, studies are coming, including a National Institutes of Health clinical trial comparing remdesivir against a placebo.

There are also drugs that could potentially address the immune system’s response to the virus.

“A lot of times patients with this virus get sicker in the second week of their illness ― and it’s not the virus, but the immune system that makes them get quite sick,” Cutrell said. “They experience an exaggerated state of inflammation or ‘cytokine storm.’”

Some drugs that might dampen the immune system’s effects are currently in clinical trials. Then there’s the now-controversial drug hydroxychloroquine, which has long been used for malaria or inflammatory conditions like rheumatoid arthritis or lupus. Although the drug received a lot of early attention, the studies showing potential benefits for COVID-19 patients have been mostly anecdotal with no control groups to compare against.

“There are also concerns about safety, including cardiac issues and arrhythmias that give doctors pause,” Cutrell said, noting that the FDA recently advised Americans not to use hydroxychloroquine outside of a hospital setting.

Finally, COVID-19 might be treatable with convalescent plasma.

“This is where people who have had the disease and recovered donate plasma, and that plasma is given to someone with an active stage of disease,” Cutrell explained.

The antibodies and proteins in that plasma could potentially help someone with COVID-19 recover. (You may be able to donate plasma if you have recovered from the coronavirus.)

Until we have a vaccine or meaningful treatment, we need to proceed with caution, ramp up testing and isolate the sick quickly if we hope to get back to some “semblance of normalcy,” Cutrell said.

“In my opinion, before we have effective treatment or vaccine, we will have to behave similarly to South Korea, Singapore or Hong Kong, with widespread access to testing, contact tracing and isolation, quarantining people in cases of potential contact,” he said. “In doing this, they’ve been able to stave off having large scale epidemics in their country and are allowed to be a little more open than other places where those things are not in place.”

“Of course, those countries have not yet seen second waves of the virus.”

“That approach requires constant vigilance,” Cutrell acknowledged. But even as scientists and doctors work to develop effective treatments and a vaccine, he said “thoughtful and incremental” strategies can help us move forward to “a period of more normal activities.”

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Note from the HuffPost: Experts are still learning about the novel coronavirus. The information in this story is what was known or available as of the end of April, 2020, but it’s possible guidance around COVID-19 could change as scientists discover more about the virus. Please check the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the most updated recommendations.

Here’s the link to my first DyingWords post titled Just How Deadly is Novel Coronavirus and Covid-19?