Chapter 85: Avian Influenza Strikes
On a remote island in the South Pacific, deep in the dense rainforest, under a volcano at a low altitude, the Tang Empire built a secret base there, it is not known to the world, and even only a few high-level officials of the Tang Empire know that there is such a place, its code name is Area 51, which is the fifty-first secret laboratory of the Tang Empire National Laboratory.
Unlike other laboratories, the Ward 51 laboratory studies biological viruses, using the Spanish flu that appeared in the late World War I as the original research, and obtained a very small number of disease strains from Shijie medical schools in various countries for culture experiments.
Accidents are always unavoidable, the key is to deal with the accident mechanism, timely handling of accidents can prevent the spread of the virus as much as possible, otherwise it is extremely harmful.
As soon as Zhang Meng learned of the accident, he ordered emergency measures to be taken to isolate and treat all those who came into contact with the virus.
Eventually, however, Sector 51 returned to peace, and only a few people in the outside world knew that the accident had occurred, and Ward 51 remained full of mystery.
Because state secrets were involved, only a small number of people participated in the investigation of the accident, and it was kept secret, so the case was quickly closed and reduced to ordinary accident handling.
However, what people don't know is that the accident in Area 51 is not accidental, but someone wants to get the virus strain and serum antibodies, so as to seek huge profits.
The matter is related to Yang Chen, the manager of a pharmaceutical company owned by Datang Third Heavy Industry, whose nephew is an assistant to a foreign virology expert. A drunken drink reveals something about the mysterious Fifty-One District. Yang Chen knew that District 51 was a state secret of the Tang Empire, and he was also patriotic, so he didn't say anything nonsense to the outside world. But he worked as a manager for a pharmaceutical company. The amount of drugs sold and the profit are the key to measuring his own strength.
Yang Chen also wants to climb up, he wants to sit in the high position of the third heavy industry, so he needs to create performance to beat his competitors. For drug sales, the most desired thing is that someone is sick, and the medicine that can cure the disease can only be provided by him. Just as the umbrella seller hoped that it would rain every day, Yang Chen tried to get virus strains and antibody serum samples through his nephew, but the inventory in District 51 was very strict. There's no way to start.
In the end, Yang Chen let his nephew take the risk and deliberately caused an accident to spread the virus strain. His nephew then collected samples of the virus strain from infected colleagues and falsely claimed to be infected himself, thus obtaining antibody serum.
After Yang Chen got the virus strain and serum, he immediately received funding from the company in the name of developing a new drug. Large-scale production of antiviral serum. When the number reached a certain size, he sent people to quietly carry the virus strain named H1N1 to Europe and the United States. He did not dare to spread the virus strain in the Tang Empire, nor did he go to China to spread it frantically, he wanted to go to Japan to spread and kill the Japanese devils, but he thought that the Tang Empire could not provide medicine to the Japanese and could not make money and get results, and at the same time, Japan was too close to China and could easily infect the Chinese, so he also gave up.
Ultimately. Yang Chen sent people to spread the virus in the United States and Europe, and he knew that Westerners had money.
The speed of transmission was slow at first. Westerners find that they have a cold and headache after the first time to go to the hospital to see a doctor, although the hospital doctors do not know the H1N1 virus, but treat it as a severe cold, after the injection and medicine quickly improved, only a very small number of people did not have time to seek medical treatment after the symptoms worsened and died, this situation is very common, so no one cares.
Three months later, the flu season has passed, but more and more people get the flu, hospitals in Europe and the United States are overcrowded, the original cold treatment drugs can only delay the disease but can not be cured, the health departments of Europe and the United States have paid attention to it, widely issued invitation letters, and asked major pharmaceutical companies to help develop targeted treatment drugs.
At this time, Yang Chen finally waited for the opportunity and sent a large number of professional salesmen to sell the drugs he had secretly hoarded to major hospitals in Europe and the United States, and soon achieved remarkable results, and the patient's condition was immediately controlled and began to improve.
As a result, more and more European and American hospitals placed orders with Yang Chen's pharmaceutical company, and the order volume increased exponentially, and Yang Chen finally created a huge income of hundreds of millions of Tang yuan for Datang Third Heavy Industry, and Yang Chen's popularity suddenly became famous in the Tang Empire, and the high-level position he had envied for a long time had opened the door to him.
However, although Datang Third Heavy Industry successfully prevented the European and American influenza for several months through the large-scale production of H1N1 antiviral drugs, Yang Chen did not estimate the power of the H1N1 virus, although the virus stopped spreading among humans, but in poultry it combined with the traditional avian plague virus mutated, resulting in a large-scale outbreak of plague in European and American animal husbandry, millions of cattle and sheep and other livestock, hundreds of millions of chickens, ducks and geese and other poultry were wiped out. In less than a week, tens of thousands of cattle were infected and died within three days, leaving the rancher bankrupt in an instant, which is very terrifying.
The Tang Empire also has a huge livestock and poultry breeding base, all in Australia. Although there has not yet been an outbreak of avian influenza in Australia, the Tang Empire immediately took measures after receiving the news to strictly monitor and disinfect all livestock farms operated by the Tang Empire to prevent infection with avian influenza.
The whole Shijie meat market has been devastated, especially in Europe and the United States, and Westerners can't stand it without eating meat every day, but the terrible avian flu makes everyone dare not eat meat for fear of being infected.
At this time, canned meat from the Tang Empire became a bestseller. Since avian flu only appears in Europe and the United States, Australia is considered to be an isolated place, and the meat sources of the Tang Empire are all obtained from Australia, so Europeans and Americans can eat at ease.
As a result, the major meat product production enterprises under the second heavy industry of the Tang Empire have obtained huge orders, and the supply exceeds demand, and the retail retail of a canned beef is 1.5 Tang yuan, which has risen to 3.5 Tang yuan per can in a few months, and it is still in short supply, so that the major meat processing enterprises under the second heavy industry of Datang have worked overtime to produce various meat products, making profits of hundreds of millions of Tang yuan, and the bosses count the money to cramp their hands.
The great changes in Europe and the United States in half a year have made the Tang Empire greatly profitable, and made European and American countries jealous. However, there is one person in the Tang Empire who is very sensitive to this kind of thing, and this is Zhang Meng.
In the era when Zhang Meng lived, the avian flu mutated every day, and he didn't stop worrying about being infected when he ate meat, and the epidemic was found in a chicken farm at every turn, and as a result, hundreds of thousands of innocent chickens and other related livestock were not spared, and they were culled cleanly, so the chickens and dogs were not left.
Zhang Meng knows that such a large-scale flu mutation should not occur in this era, otherwise it should have been recorded in history long ago. Half a year after the outbreak of the flu and the accident in Area 51, it is easy to guess that there is a connection between the two.
"Someone, call Tan Jincheng over." (To be continued......)