The Fine Print

Today’s prompt: “The next blockbuster medicine that will be invented and what will happen as a result”

The formulators of the drug call it Vexitrine, but most people call it 12-28. After 12 Monkeys and 28 Days Later. The pandemic was fast-moving and cut through whole swaths of the population in Asia before spreading to South America, northern Africa, pockets of Europe and the Rust Belt. Cough, fever and respiratory infections led swiftly to organ failure. Hundreds of thousands of people were wiped out in mere weeks. But the CDC and its counterparts in other countries caught the threat early and threw all their resources at vaccines for the uninfected and, while not quite a cure – you never clear the disease – a drug that weakens the virus so much that those who take it regularly become symptomless. The combination of the vaccine and drug are hailed as one of the great triumphs of modern medicine, right up there with the eradication of smallpox and the polio vaccine.

Like all medicines, each bottle of 12-28 is labeled with indications, dosage instructions, and warnings about potential side effects. That one on there about, in rare cases, internal bleeding leading to death? That one’s on there because of you.