The Troubles Fame Brings

"Chinese Scientist Cracks the Laws of Viral Evolution, Providing a New Approach for Broad-spectrum Vaccine Design"

"Chinese Scientist Proposes Broad-spectrum Vaccine Design Approach to Combat Ongoing Viral Mutations"

"A Glimmer of Hope for Completely Eliminating the Virus: Chinese Scientist's Research Could Help End the Global Pandemic!"

Starting from a certain year, domestic media had completely lost their function of reporting news. For events with news value, they either waited for official announcements or reposted foreign reports. Their coverage lacked the depth and breadth of self-media.

Not merely inferior—far inferior to many self-media outlets that stuck to the facts.

Chinese media copied overseas reports, while Chinese self-media outlets laid out Chen Yuanguang's past accomplishments, his latest research, and the positive significance of those findings for ending the pandemic in crystal-clear detail.

"Recently, the hottest topic in overseas media has been a paper published in Science by a Chinese scientist. It may bring an early end to the global pandemic in the near future.

What exactly happened? Simply put, this Chinese scientist used computational simulations to calculate the virus's future mutation paths and accurately predict the mutation sites in its future variants.

That way, pharmaceutical institutions could obtain the mutation sites of future variants in advance and design vaccines covering both current and future viral mutation sites. Once you received such a vaccine, you would no longer have to worry about immune escape.

Previously, even mRNA vaccines only worked for six months or even less. But with broad-spectrum vaccines, they could remain effective for three years or longer.

That was why the media had been saying the global pandemic could end earlier than expected.

I saw that many viewers had sent me questions through private messages, so I picked out some typical ones to answer.

Was this a breakthrough achievement? Definitely. His paper contained data validating that his simulation algorithm was correct, and future data would also be used to verify it. This was a major breakthrough for computational biology in virology.

Considering the current era, its significance was even greater.

Could this research help end the global pandemic? It would have an extremely positive effect, but I couldn't say whether it could end it completely.

Because vaccine development cost money, production cost money, and transportation cost money. Broad-spectrum vaccines would be even more expensive than ordinary mRNA vaccines. Developed countries could afford them, but underdeveloped regions like Africa and the Middle East clearly didn't have that kind of money. What if they ended up breeding some ultimate mutant over there?

As for ending it completely, I didn't know, and I couldn't say.

Who was the author? He sounded incredible. Oh, I forgot to mention it. Many viewers had probably heard of him—Chen Yuanguang, the original author of the novel Kuala Lumpur Affairs. He had only graduated from Jiang University last year and gone to MIT. While at Jiang University, he had published two papers in Nature, and after going to MIT, he published another Nature paper. This should be his fourth top-tier publication. An absolute genius.

All of his previous top-tier papers had focused on computational simulations, so the academic world had not raised many doubts about this latest achievement. His papers were all applications of computational simulations in chemistry, biology, and virology. This was within his area of expertise.

It was just that this achievement had once again shown us how much deep-learning algorithms combined with computational biology could accomplish. I guessed that computational biology would be packed in the next few years.

Would he return to China or stay in America? How would I know? I didn't know him. I'd ask my friends at Jiang University whether any of them knew him, then get them to ask around.

His PhD wasn't even finished yet. With so many top achievements, staying at MIT and landing a faculty position would be effortless. Why would he come back to compete here? Wasn't there that joke that even Hawking would have to toast people before getting a seat at the table in China?

Then again, maybe not. Top talents like him weren't on the same track as us. If he came back, he wouldn't need to compete. Faculty positions, prestigious titles—he could get them whenever he wanted. It all depended on him.

Could this achievement win a Nobel Prize? All I could say was that there was hope, but he was too young. I didn't think they would give it to him so quickly. The Nobel Prize judges would definitely wait a few years before awarding it to him.

But he was absolutely one of the most promising domestic candidates for the prize. Chen Yuanguang's achievements in computational biology and computational chemistry were among the best in the field. Calling him a leading figure in the field would not be an exaggeration. And he was so young, only in his early twenties. He had a strong chance of winning awards later on.

All I could say was that while he was also in his early twenties, I was still worrying about graduating with my PhD and making a living as an internet celebrity by posting videos on Bilibili. Fuck, why did this get more depressing the more I talked about it?" A Bilibili uploader's video was far more detailed than the Chinese media reports.

Chen Yuanguang's achievement sparked heated discussion around the world, while major pharmaceutical groups rapidly began developing broad-spectrum vaccines.

Everyone knew that compared with the newest broad-spectrum vaccines, mRNA was no longer in demand. Broad-spectrum vaccines were the future.

"Pangalos, how did the talks with Light Chen go?

Did he accept our offer?" Dobert asked. He was AstraZeneca's executive vice president and president of its biopharmaceuticals division.

Pangalos shook his head. "Chen firmly rejected our invitation. He probably still wanted to remain in academia.

I think we needed another way to work with him. Top scientists like him always wanted to stay in the ivory tower during the early stages of their careers rather than enter industry.

After giving it some thought, we could absolutely work together through a partnership. We could hire him as a special consultant, and his future findings on the simulated evolution of the COVID virus would be shared only with AstraZeneca and not made public.

That way, our vaccines would have a longer effective period. That would be our exclusive advantage. With AstraZeneca's advantage in Europe, European governments would only consider AstraZeneca, and we would monopolize the entire European market.

Even if Pfizer asked America to intervene, we could use this advantage to leave America with nothing to say."

Dobert thought it was a good idea, but he had serious doubts about whether the European Union could refuse America's demands.

Even if their vaccines were far ahead of Pfizer's, EU governments would still have to give Pfizer a certain share.

But that was not important. Even if they only received most of the market share, it would be enough for AstraZeneca to deliver an exceptionally impressive report to the board this year. As executives, they would also receive substantial bonuses.

AstraZeneca was not the only one to think of this. Pfizer, Merck, and the rest of those institutions had thought of it too.

Chen Yuanguang was endlessly annoyed by the interruptions, so he decided to cut through the mess quickly. He sent a mass message on WhatsApp: I will not conduct any more simulation calculations in this area. I will move on to other research directions. Then he shut off his phone.

Why did he choose that? Because the compensation those pharmaceutical companies offered for serving as a special consultant and keeping papers confidential was not much at all. As a bestselling author and IP owner, he earned far more than that.

His computational simulation methods had already been published. Those pharmaceutical companies could imitate them and produce rough results themselves, so they were unwilling to offer a high price. Their offers were extremely limited.