the international response to the threat of sheva was to form a special task force that would work alongside the centers for disease control and prevention (cdc) to find a vaccine. because the "disease", called "herod's flu", was already in the genome of every person on earth, the only two options were to inhibit the activation of the sheva gene by discovering the signal it used or to abort the second-stage fetus. due to the rapid mutation rate of the missing-link signal molecule, preventing the activation of the gene was infeasible.