Vaccines: A New American Success Story? — with The Wall Street Journal’s Gregory Zuckerman
Have we revolutionized vaccine development? What does this mean for our lives and our health well beyond the vaccine for Covid-19? Could this kind of life sciences revolution only happen in America? And what about Operation Warp Speed? Is it a model for future public-private partnerships to solve big problems?
Greg Zuckerman of The Wall Street Journal joins the podcast to discuss his new and fascinating book, “A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of the Life-or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine.”
Greg’s previous books include: “The Man Who Solved The Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution”, and then there was “The Greatest Trade Ever”, “The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters”, and “Rising Above: How 11 Athletes Overcame Challenges in Their Youth to Become Stars”.
Greg is a Special Writer and investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal, a 20-year veteran of the paper and a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb award — the highest honor in business journalism.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] Listen, I hate to be sort of, uh, an apologist in any way for Wall Street and for Big Pharma, but Wall Street and Big Pharma save the day here. They're not always looking out for us. There are reasons for criticism, but we have to give them deep gratitude when it comes to these vaccines that they, they spent years of frustrated work and that we need to be grateful for.
Welcome to Post Corona. Where we try to understand COVID 19's lasting impact on economy, culture, and geopolitics. I'm Dan Senor.
In spite of all the human catastrophe of the past two years, there have been a few things to be grateful for. Among them, that children were barely harmed, at least physically, in a direct way by the pandemic. Almost by some kind of divine intervention. And then, of course, that technology enabled huge swaths, although not all, of our economy to continue to function despite the [00:01:00] lockdowns.
And that we developed vaccines in record time. Really, there's been nothing in history like it. Rapid vaccine development. Development. How did it happen? Now, I know we were planning to wrap this series with a conversation with Scott Gottlieb, but we'll wait until the next episode for that conversation because we wanted to have a timely conversation today with Greg Zuckerman of the Wall Street Journal, who just sent me a copy of his new book called A Shot to Save the World, the inside story of the life or death race for a COVID 19 vaccine.
I just got it. I've been devouring it. I wanted to have him on this podcast. He may have just cracked some of the questions I've been raising in this series about the future of vaccine development. Greg is a prolific writer. His previous books include The Man Who Solved the Market, How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution, and then there was The Greatest Trade Ever, and then there was, before that, The Frackers, [00:02:00] The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters, And then, one of my favorites, Rising Above, How 11 Athletes Overcame Challenges in Their Youth to Become Stars.
That last book he actually wrote with his kids. I recommend all these books. Greg is also a special writer and investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal. He's a 20 year veteran of the paper, and a three time winner of the Gerald Loeb Award. The Gerald Loeb Award is the highest honor in business journalism.
Greg will help us understand how the vaccine revolution happened so quickly. And where does it go from here? beyond COVID 19. This is Post Corona.
And I'm pleased to welcome Greg Zuckerman from the Wall Street Journal and the author of A Shot to Save the World, the inside story of the life or death race for a COVID 19 vaccine. Hi, Greg. Hey, Dan. Nice to be here. Good to be with you. So, um, Greg, I [00:03:00] want to jump into the book, which is really, um, Really terrific.
And, and some of the issues you unpack in the book, but before I do, I, I want to take our listeners back to where you were before you tackled this project, this, this book project, the shot to save the world in terms of your own experience with COVID, your personal experience, because I think it's important for people to understand what you were dealing with, because this is a, an actually an upbeat book.
Yeah. And, um, it provides badly needed good news in a sea of not a lot of good news, uh, these days, or certainly during that time. But it wasn't always good news for you and your family. So can you just Talk a little bit about how you were all affected personally by COVID. Sure. And um, before I get there, I wanted to just, um, underscore your point that, um, I aimed this book, this book to be a positive book and we've all read and heard and discussed all the mistakes [00:04:00] that were made.
Um, and I didn't need to emphasize that or go back to that. My book is what about what went right. We've read about what went wrong. My book is about What went right and so much has gone right. Um, so to yeah, to get your own, uh, to get my perspective and, and my experience, um, I don't know if it's so dissimilar for, for many others.
Um, I was traveling to Europe first to Israel and then to Europe in January of 2020. We all heard. about this virus in China. It was in the back of our minds. If we all could remember back to those, those weeks in those, that period. Um, and I had to have two sons, uh, both in college right now who were more concerned than I was.
And they wore masks traveling from Israel to London. I, um, was promoting an earlier book and did some speeches and they came with me and we had a good time. Uh, and I. Put on a mask and people were looking at me and I was a little embarrassed and they thought I was odd. And walking through Heathrow, I remember [00:05:00] distinctly taking it off, just feeling uncomfortable.
And also, if we recall back then, I remember reading, um, both health authorities in the people in the government else, or were saying, we wrote in the Wall Street Journal, I think saying, don't wear masks. It's a, it, it actually may hurt rather than help. So that Dr. Fauci told us not to wear masks. Yeah. Yep, yep.
That's true. I remember him saying that as well. So here I was traveling through Middle East and Europe, uh, came back to America in January and, um, I was no more concerned than anybody else. And then it, it, it hit, the virus swept the world. Um, I was buried deep in my, um, basement, um, working from home in New Jersey.
in suburban New Jersey. And, um, yeah, my, uh, my son eventually, uh, got COVID. Um, my brother in law, sister in law nearby, we're very close with them. They all got, their families got it. My uncle died of COVID, uh, in Israel. A neighbor died of COVID. Um, I know [00:06:00] someone, Who has long COVID today, and it's a miserable experience, and I feel for him, uh, his brain is foggy, it's hard to make decisions, it's hard to work.
So, uh, Leah, like, you know, and other friends and family have got the disease, um, none, uh, the other one's got it too badly, thank God. So, yeah, like everybody else, um, I dealt with it and was careful, and I didn't myself, uh, get it. But, um, you know, we all lived, um, with some degree of fear over the past year.
It was not a story you were just observing. You were, you were living it. Right, but part, part of the reason I wrote this book is to be something of a, of a distraction. So I was working for the Wall Street Journal this whole time, but Um, you know, worried about the world, um, in deep in my basement. And I decided to track the development of the vaccines.
My hope, both as a citizen as a, and as a writer was that I made a bet that it would work that we'd find some vaccines. And I set out to, [00:07:00] in real time, try to get inside some of these efforts in the government, in private industry, et cetera. Right. So you write politicians, government officials, business leaders, and public health.
Professionals were unprepared for the most devastating pandemic in a century. This is what you write in the book. The errors, oversights and obfuscations witnessed after the mysterious respiratory illness first emerged in Wuhan, China in January, 2020 could fill a book or two. It just won't be this one.
This is the story of how science protected humanity from a modern day plague. So, that is a very upbeat note. At what point, you said early on you made a bet, so give me, be more specific, what month in, in 2020 Yeah. Did you decide I'm going to make this bet. I'm going to tell the story of a success story before you knew it was a success story.
Yeah, I think every worst comes to worst. I learned some science and I speak to some really super smart people. That's what I do for a living and I enjoy doing, uh, [00:08:00] picking their brains. And I thought I would go for the ride along with them. Um, it was the spring. It was probably early spring or maybe even late winter.
And I guess what first intrigued me was this company in Cambridge, Massachusetts called Moderna. And it was fascinating to me just because I had never heard of it and here they were at the lead or one of the leads at that point in the race. We'd heard about other efforts, University of Oxford, I didn't really have any insight into that one.
Um, this German company beyond tech, there were people out there that I was hearing about, but Madrona fascinated me because. They were, not only were they unheard of, that I knew there was a lot of skepticism about them. Um, even suspicion, downright, um, accusations of, of even fraud. You hear, you, you heard people suggesting that the CEO was like a Elizabeth Holmes type and, and yet, here they were.
They're the people that maybe are going to come up with a vaccine. That kind of intrigued me. I'm a, [00:09:00] I, I like the outsider, uh, theme. Um, and they were, Clear Outsiders to the mainstream in science. So that, that was an intriguing theme for me. So you write in the book about Stéphane Bencel, who's the CEO of Moderna.
What Stéphane Bencel was trying to do was an impossible task, except You write. He was trying to do this for a long time. It wasn't just an impossible task during COVID. I mean, Moderna, the company, is, the name was a mashup, as you point out, of, of the words modified mRNA. They were deep into mRNA long before it was cool.
So Is that what turned you on to him? That he was plugging away at this when, when all the naysayers were saying this isn't going to work? Yeah. Long before COVID? Yes, both he and his scientists, and it's true of other scientists around the world. I, I am really intrigued by that kind of persistence and resilience and ability to ignore The conventional wisdom and that's what it was [00:10:00] the conventional wisdom for years and if you want now or later I think can take a step back just kind of explain why MRNA people were so down on working with MRNA But let's do that.
Let's actually do that. Why don't you tell us why people were so down on sure so basically MRNA is a molecule modified RNA and It's in all of us, it's crucial for all of us, basically it transports, it takes, it's the messenger, it takes the instructions from DNA within the cell, uh, to another part of the cell where proteins are created that keep us alive.
So in like bio 101, whatever, you know, AP bio, people remember I, I did not take it myself, but I, uh, I hired a PhD to help me along my effort and it was basically getting an education along the way. The, um, the axiom is, uh, DNA to mRNA to protein. That's just sort of how life exists. And um, so in other words, it was always this molecule it's crucial, it's inside us.
And scientists [00:11:00] have always said, well, what if we could develop this, synthesize this, create this mRNA molecule in the lab? Um, couldn't we then send messages to our body to create any protein that we want? And that means we can actually maybe make the body into its own drug factory kind of thing, vaccine factory, just by sending a message to the, to the body's cells.
So it was always kind of like this Holy Grail out there. Um, what if we could develop mRNA in the lab. And then people kind of always said, well, don't waste your time on it because mRNA gets chopped up really quickly, as you just said, by the cells enzymes. In other words, it doesn't last. Um, and it's really almost, uh, I would say possible.
It's a real challenge for years, literally decades just to get it into the body's cells. We've got, um, our immune system fights it off. It's foreign. What? No one really had optimism that you could get it all the way into the [00:12:00] cell. And that's what the it's kind of ironic. I'm skipping ahead a little bit, but a lot of the anti vaxxers today or some of them say, well, I don't want mRNA in my body.
It's going to affect my DNA. It's going to change me. But no, on the contrary, it's so short lived that no one ever wanted to work with it. So that was always the conventional wisdom. Don't waste your time with mRNA. And that's why it's important in my book. I go back and I tell the story of mRNA. I tell the story of a number of scientists along the way, researchers who were obstinate or stubborn and said, no, we're going to ignore the conventional wisdom.
We're going to figure out a way. to make mRNA into a vaccine or a drug and their stories to me, you know, it's, it's, it's inspiring to, to plug away at a problem. I mean, I don't know about you, Dan, but like part of the reason I do what I do for a living, I'm a journalist. I work at the wall street journalist.
I like to produce things kind of quickly. I mean, this book took a year and a half, you know, that's longer than most of my article, but I like to do work and see it out there, you know, and, and. To be in a lab and to [00:13:00] spend years, years, literally working on a problem, making incremental improvements, I find that kind of impressive to have that kind of patience.
And just to, to, uh, sort of set things up for, for people having, for our listeners to have a historical context, the idea of turning Any of these MRNA tracks into an actual successful vaccine during COVID or any other time just the how unprecedented was so before 2020, the I think the fastest vaccine developed was a vaccine for mom.
Yes, for mumps. Yes, right, which took about What? Four years. Four years. Okay. And then what about other vaccines? Measles, polio, typhoid? Like, how long did those take? I mean, on average, ten years. So um, some of those took even longer. And um, it is kind of interesting because, uh, I just hear from, you know, my parents and the older generation, but polio, those who remember, those who've read about it, How we all just [00:14:00] cheered and celebrated and it was front page news and there wasn't any split in the in the country or the world about a polio vaccine.
We just sort of embraced it. Um, by contrast, today, obviously, there's much more controversy about this modern day miracle, and I think that's part of your point. And I think it's a point that needs to be emphasized. It is a modern day miracle, one that I think we're just a little too close to right now to appreciate.
Um, what a wonder it is. It's really the greatest achievement, I would argue, of modern science, maybe even modern finance too because modern, because Wall Street played a huge role, investors played a huge role in this thing too. And yeah, again, I think we're just a little too close to appreciate it right now.
So is that why you think we know so little about it? Because I am struck by this. I mean, I mentioned this to you earlier, like I still, and everyone I speak to who was involved In, whether it was Operation Warp Speed, or was working in any of the pharmaceutical companies. I, I'm kind of, I say, why, why don't we know anything about this?
Like, in other words, we know things, we know at a very top level, but, [00:15:00] I, th th th this is Extraordinary and yet we are almost we almost like take it for granted now Now if you had your first shot of your second shot now It's if you had your third shot and we just kind of are moving along as though getting these shots is is just available to us So I'll give you a few answers.
I think in terms of why we don't know that much about it. Well Um, that's why I wrote my book. So hopefully people can learn, learn about, uh, how these results after there's a, after the, this podcast, there'll be a huge spike in book sales. Here you go. The people's familiarization with familiarity with the, the story will, will go through the roof, but up till now.
Sure. So I'll give you a few answers. So first is I think we have a little bit of a covid fatigue, so I'll just tell you in terms of my book. My book, um, is out, um, a short uh, period of time. It's done well, thankfully, and, um, But, there's a certain part of the populace and even the world of media, like some of the media You know, I've been on TV and all that kind of stuff, but there's other people that I've done previous books.
I've done. I've been on media and they say, Greg, [00:16:00] I love you, but I'm done with COVID. I don't want to know any more about COVID. I've gone through a tough time. I'm COVID it out. So I think some segment of the population is exhausted of the topic and doesn't want to want to hear anymore. Now, in terms of it.
Operation Warp Speed. I'll give you two answers. Um, the first is that some of the most important people leading the effort have been pretty secretive and I don't mean that in a negative kind of way, but um, like General Perna was the logistics head of, of the effort and did remarkable, miraculous work.
The guy has not Gotten enough publicity, and frankly, um, I'm like scooping myself here, but I would like to do more work on him. But he wouldn't talk to me. He wouldn't talk to, he's a general, he's comes from that world where he doesn't want to talk to anyone. He doesn't wanna get credit. He's recently retired, so I'm hoping he opens up.
He, he didn't want to talk. Um, so, so, so I gotta tell you something. The, the, there was a great blog post by Alex Debark at Marginal Revolution. And he writes Operation Warp Speed, a story yet to be told. This is the title of the blog post. [00:17:00] And he opens by saying, uh, as just an indication, meaning it's just an indication of what we're talking about, how nobody knows really about the story.
He says, it's just, I'm quoting here, it's just an indication, I look for references in a bunch of pandemic books to General Perna. Who led Operation Warp Speed. And he says, Michael Lewis in the pandemic never mentions Perna, neither does Slavitt in the book Preventable, nor does Wright in the book The Plague Year, nor does Scott Gottlieb in Uncontrolled Speed.
And he goes through all these books, Nightmare Scenario, have just two index entries for Perna, basically just stating his appointment and meeting with Trump. He goes on and on and on. That's fascinating. He basically shows he's like this invisible figure. Yeah. So he is in my book, but he's not a bigger character as he could be.
He worked with a guy. But that's by choice. So you're saying that he's choosing to lay low? Oh, for sure. It's his choice. Yes. He's just a military man. He didn't want the credit. He's a logistics guy. He's behind the scenes. Until Operation Warp Speed, his job was to keep the army fed. And the way it was [00:18:00] described to me by people who worked with him, with Perna is You only hear about those kind of people when something, when they mess up, when something bad goes on.
And he's the kind of guy, he doesn't want that kind of credit. I do write about Juan Andres in the book, um, and Juan worked very closely with Perna and he's also a logistics kind of guy. And it's also just hard for, I think, writers to focus on those kinds of people. The other answer I was going to give you is that, um, Operation Warp Speed, there's some political nature to, you know, there's the question of how much credit should the Trump administration get, how much credit.
Should Trump get, personally. And Operation War Speed, I look at it, it's kind of fascinating. I don't know if you, uh, you're a sports guy, remember? Do you know Bill James? Yep. Okay, so Bill James, uh, Biggs. Explain. He's the father of sabermetrics. He's, you know, all the moneyball kind of stuff that we all know about today.
Yeah, pre Billy Bean, Billy Bean. Exactly. I remember growing up as a kid reading his baseball, uh, now we're getting off topic a little bit, but he wrote a piece once about Daryl Strawberry, [00:19:00] and he said Daryl Strawberry is both underrated and overrated at the same time, and I think that's the same case with Operation Warp Speed.
In other words, Operation Warp Speed, I don't think we appreciate Not just in terms of the money and the financing, but also in terms of logistics, uh, supplies, resources. Perna did stuff like closing bridges so that Moderna could get necessary supplies shipped back then. Remember, you know, it was hard to ship stuff around the country.
I mean, today again, but for different reasons. So. They were crucial. And yet, I think it's overrated, overstated. Also, as I write in my book, Moderna was running out of money in May of 2020. And I didn't know this. And I guess other people didn't because they pointed to this as a scoop in the book and they turned to the government and they couldn't get money from the government.
They couldn't get money from the Gates Foundation. They couldn't get money. And now the stock had been underperforming, right? Like the year before the stock was down, I think something like 15 percent below its IPO price from a year earlier. So it's like, They were the market had kind of turned on by then though the market [00:20:00] was that was really the only place they were getting any Love on Wall Street by then the market this stock had been going up, but they still didn't have the money So yeah, so operation warp speed in operation worse people.
I also write in my book in another way slow down Majorna So they for logistic for just because I'm bureaucratic reasons. Um, it's Lowie And it's not as he was getting pressure himself. So I was the other person who ran in months of slowly He was getting pressure to include he they made Majorna Um, when they were doing their testing, um, in their, in their trials, when they were testing, when they were doing, uh, testing their, their vaccine, um, they had to ask other questions while they were working with, with, uh, volunteers, stuff that had nothing to do with the vaccine because other people had needs and requirements and went to Operation Warp Speed.
And so, and, and also Operation Warp Speed threw Novavax out of, a plant, a manufacturing plant. Novavax is a company in Maryland, a really interesting company that I think will come out soon with a vaccine that will be approved and it's going to be very helpful elsewhere in the world. Anyway, um, [00:21:00] Operation Warp Speed threw them out of a manufacturing plant in Maryland because uh, Johnson Johnson and AstraZeneca and Oxford were ahead of Novavax in the race and they thought, Hey, let's kick Novavax out.
put these guys in there because we got to get vaccines quickly. So that decision slowed things down for Novavax. So again, in some ways, um, the scientists and the companies and the government and other people, um, they played, all played really important roles and you don't, you don't want to overstate Operation Warp Speed either.
Okay. But I will say this in defense of Operation Warp Speed, the core problem, it seems to me that they, that they did solve for was, or I guess among some of the most core problems was Was, pharmaceutical companies were reluctant to get into manufacturing mode before they were approved, authorized, and ready to go to market.
And, what Operation Warp Speed determined is that sequencing just wouldn't [00:22:00] work in the middle of a pandemic. So we've got to dual track this process. So let's give them the, the guarantees that they're going to have purchases, whether or not they actually can produce something to go to market, so they can begin doing all the other pieces that are normally sequenced after you get the approval.
Yes. And, uh, it's historic what happened. Never before have we simultaneously developed and tested and manufactured. Can you just explain that? Just explain what was actually done. I mean, I did it at a very high level, but you were deep in it. Yeah, the reason why vaccines usually take years and years and years is no one's gonna buy them.
Manufacture them, build the vaccines. It's so difficult. It's very challenging and mRNA is easier than the historic way of making vaccines, which is taking a piece of the actual virus and killing it or attenuating it, weakening, weakening it and building a vaccines. Um, and um, You need vats and it's, it's, uh, it's, um, you need eggs, chicken eggs, usually, or other kind of eggs.
It's, it's complicated, [00:23:00] challenging process, the manufacturing process, but mRNA is difficult too. And, um, no one's going to spend the money. It's hugely expensive until you've proven that you've got a vaccine. Why would you? So that's. The beauty of, of Warp Speed and the strategy was we're going to write you these checks and we're going to make a bet that you can, um, find a vaccine and, and the brilliance of Warp Speed is it was the investment, it was like a investment portfolio.
They picked two vaccines from three different vaccine approaches. So there were two mRNA vaccines, the ones we're familiar with, the Pfizer one and the Moderna one. There were two. adenovirus vaccines, which I can explain. And that, that's another approach that's revolutionary. And it's going to lead to all kinds of interesting things.
And that's J and J, and that's in UK, the AstraZeneca Oxford one. And there were two protein subunit approaches, and Novavax I mentioned, and, uh, I think GSK the other. Protein subunit. So yes, so because they had this money that from warp speed, these companies could do [00:24:00] everything. They could take the risk of manufacturing a vaccine before it was approved.
Um, the caveat is that Pfizer didn't take any development money from warp speed and Pfizer's the one that it was first to the market. Uh, and it's helped more people than anybody else in the United States at least. And they, but they did sell their, their vaccine ahead of time to the government and that.
It was a lot of money and that was helpful to them. So yeah. In addition to Stéphane Benzel from Moderna, another character you, you focus on in the, in your book is, is Ugar Sahin, uh, from, uh, BioNTech. And you write also early on, on mRNA, long before COVID. You write in the book, Dr. Sahin had spent more than two decades researching how to teach the immune system to fight disease.
He needed an IPO to help make it happen. But investors were balking and then you go on to say they only raised 150 million dollars in his IPO which was Something like half of what he had hoped for, [00:25:00] valuing the company at 3. 4 billion. And this was all before COVID. So also the, the company, he was facing headwinds with his company.
What can you tell us about Uhar Sahin and his wife too, who's, they were quite a team. Yeah, fascinating individuals. Uh, I've spoken to a ton of people. I couldn't get to Germany, unfortunately, obviously with COVID and such, I had planned a trip, but I couldn't, but I thankfully got to talk to. Dozens and dozens of people who worked with him, went to school with him, and I talked to Sahin and his wife as well.
But, um, it was a privilege to talk to those people. They're just kind of quirky, interesting characters. So, Sahin, uh, was born in Turkey, came to Germany like a number of other Turks back then. Um, to, uh, Germany at the time was, West Germany was, was, uh, inviting, uh, Turkish workers. They needed the help, so they came there.
And he grew up and he, um, became fascinated by the immune system. He's really obsessed with the immune system and he's got this, um, [00:26:00] belief that the immune system can be taught to fight off cancer. And that's what he dedicated his life to, frankly. So he's a cancer guy. He's not a, um, a virus guy. He's not even an mRNA guy.
He's a cancer guy. And he spent years trying to figure out ways to teach the body to fight off cancer and specifically developing a vaccine with a protein, basically a vaccine. teaches the body, it gives an education to the body's immune system. And usually you do it by introducing to the immune system, to the body, a little piece.
Historically, it's been a little piece of the, of a virus, of a pathogen, or just something that teaches you about the pathogen. So in this case, it's, it's a spike protein, you know, that, that protein that that's characteristic of, of this coronavirus. So Sahin spent years, um, working on different approaches to fight off cancer.
And one of them was mRNA. So he wasn't sort of, Um, Emmer and I pioneered, but he embraced it and threw himself into it, and he's just an interesting guy, um, he's, uh, doesn't care about wealth, he's [00:27:00] now a billionaire, but he still lives in a apartment in Mainz, Germany, he bikes to work, he doesn't own a television, he, um, doesn't own a car, um, he's, he's a little bit borderline surprised or even shocked when he realizes that his employees, his staffers aren't as dedicated to research as he is, that's all he does, I mean, I wrote about it in the book.
Yeah, explain, explain the sleeping schedule. Sleeping Yeah, I mean, um, it's not like publicly, no, but people within the company talk about how he and his wife sleep four hours a night, but it's not the same four hours. They supposedly only overlap two hours a night. Uh, at least that's that's what the staffers were told.
No one's really sure why. I mean, they're always just, they come home and they do go back to research. They're really dedicated. Um, which is kind of reassuring that there's people out there. 24 seven thinking about ways to help us and cure us and heal us. Um, and yeah, so they're, they go on vacation and they literally bring, um, big computer terminals and, and, and [00:28:00] there's stacks of paperwork and on, on their vacations and they lug them down to the pool.
They're unusual, uh, individuals. So early on in the COVID 19 pandemic, Dr. Sahin calls a senior scientist at Pfizer and he, and Sahin is very Interested in trying to find a vaccine for, for COVID 19 and the scientist advisor warns him against spending too much time on it, reminding him that past coronaviruses, at least in the 21st century, had emerged in the, uh, had emerged and then disappeared.
He, and I quote here, the scientist says to him, remember SARS, it was contained, MERS contained. Um, and. Sahin ignores that very fair point, like what did he know about this, this virus that was going to be different from those previous ones? Yeah, it's kind of fascinating that in January, [00:29:00] uh, when I was flying around the country without a mask or around the world without a mask, Ugar Sahin, as well as the key characters of my book, Stefan Benzel, uh, Dan Baruch, who is the key to the J and J vaccine.
Adrian Hill and the people at Oxford took them a little while, but they all were starting to get scared about the world and about a pa literally talking about a pandemic. Again, January, think of how January 2020. Yeah, how blase most of us were. So here, Sahin, and Sahin For Hi, from his perspective, he just read a paper and the paper was about this.
Um, it was in Little Lancet, uh, this well, well regarded British scientific publication. And it was about a family, uh, in Wuhan and the fact that, uh, the, the entire family got coronavirus and the way he looked at it, they got covid from the coronavirus. And the way he looked at it is this is a respiratory disease.
It's another coronavirus, but it seems like it's much easier to spread than the past ones. He, he realized that Wuhan's a pretty big city. It's got flights [00:30:00] connecting all kinds of different places. Um, this thing's going to spread and it probably already has spread and we are in trouble and we got to do something about it.
And he, um, got his wife. quickly convinced his wife, who's also a cancer researcher and a senior person at beyond tech. And he convinced her, Hey, we got to focus the company on it. And he told his staff and they were sort of, yeah, boss. Okay. We're going to focus on this coronavirus. But then he realized a few days later, they weren't all that.
focused or worried. They were all going to. There's a huge, big carnival there that everyone's into, and they celebrate. It goes for months, and here he is. He's, he thinks that the world's about to enter a pandemic, have to deal with a pandemic, and he sees his senior staff blasé about it, and it really drove him nuts.
And he, um, it's like, no, guys, you didn't get it. I'm serious about this. We've got to build a vaccine. And the reason, it's pretty impressive, like he, they weren't experts necessarily in mRNA. I would argue that they were fast followers. Uh, after Moderna, they learned from Moderna, I believe, and, um, the techniques, um, are those that I think Moderna [00:31:00] really revolutionized, but to their credit, they were, they were cancer specialists who had been developing this, this was one of their approaches and they ran with them.
They said, we think we can build it. And as you said, that Ugar reached out to, excuse me, Phil Dormitzer, a, um, a senior really good guy at Pfizer and Dormitzer. Super smart, but he was reflecting the conventional wisdom, which was, you don't waste too much time on a vaccine. Vaccines are not, and this is one thing that was eye opening to me, until this past year, vaccines were kind of a loser business for people in the pharma world.
You know, you give it every once in a while, every year to a vaccine, maybe once in a lifetime, and it's not something you have to take every day, and you can't charge that much for a vaccine, et cetera. So, Dormenster was saying, don't. Waste so much time on COVID, remember SARS 1, remember MERS, this stuff peters out.
And yes, Sahin said, he ignored him. He said, no, I think this is going to be a pandemic. And he got others on board at Pfizer and the rest is history. Okay. I want to [00:32:00] ask you about just going way back to the 80s. You write a little bit about efforts to, to find a vaccine or develop a vaccine for HIV AIDS.
And how some of the, some of the same tracks that we have experienced in the pursuit of a COVID, COVID 19 vaccine were at work, uh, in the 80s and there was this, this race, you know, race for a vaccine, or at least race for vaccine, race for, for a drug. Why, why did those efforts? Yeah. So I do start my book off with the chase for an HIV, uh, vaccine.
Partly just because I just find it fascinating that the players, the characters, and there were also, there were lessons learned along the way that were applicable as, as you say. Um, so there were interesting characters and companies and they were similar in that they were usually kind of [00:33:00] outsiders, the mainstream, Uh, Big Pharma didn't, some of them did spent a little time on it, but most didn't focus too much on an AIDS vaccine.
Just like, just like here, you know, you would have thought Merck and GSK and Sanofi, they're the giants when it comes today to vaccines, they didn't produce a COVID 19 vaccine. And similarly, the giants weren't all that. Um, so they were excited about working on an AIDS vaccine. So it took outsiders just like with COVID and they, there were fits and starts and twists and turns.
And there was one effort that Merck was, was really excited about that ended just awfully horribly not only did it fail, but it literally caused, um, some people to be more susceptible to AIDS and they, they close the whole effort. But what I find interesting is, so that was using a virus, basically transporting, um, the genetic material.
from, um, HIV, that virus, uh, using a different virus. And you say to yourself, well, why would you put a vaccine in you that's full of a virus? Well, [00:34:00] Merck and others figured out a way to make this virus, uh, harmless. You take a gene out and it basically viruses. Their whole job is to infect you and spread.
And so if you could have a harmless. vaccine. I'm sorry, harmless virus as the basis of a vaccine. That seemed like a great idea. And that's what Merck thought. And it ended miserably. And that, that, that virus that they use is called ADD5, adenovirus five. So, but what I, what I, what I really find really fascinating is that All the scientists involved, they said, great, there's no such thing as a failure when it comes to science.
We learn, we learn about everything. We learn about the immune system. We learn about this Ad5. And there's a scientist in Boston named Dan Baruch who said, okay, maybe Ad5 is not going to work, but what about a different kind of virus called Ad26? And there are all kinds of reasons why Ad26 is more effective as a vaccine.
And that became, and they spent years working on it. And Dan Baruch has been focused on it. AIDS this whole time, and it hasn't worked, but eventually became the j and j vaccine. Um, and another ad a, a chimp adeno, uh, became the, the, the [00:35:00] Oxford, uh, asra, um, vaccine. So it led to success when it comes to, to vaccines for covid.
And to answer your question, COVID relative to AIDS and relative to a lot of other things, is actually a pretty easy virus to handle. Yeah. They're variants. We're aware of the variants, but AIDS is different from one page. The virus itself. HIV is different from one patient to the next. Can you imagine just, it's a virus that's just within each person's body.
It's a little bit different and it commandeers our immune system. So our immune system is, is helpless against HIV. And so it's always, and it's always changing HIV as a, as a virus. It's really difficult. Mutations are on a whole other trajectory. Exactly. Exactly. So. There's still optimism. Some of the same people I write about in my book who've had success with COVID are still focused on AIDS.
And we're still optimistic about AIDS. So I don't want to count these guys out, but AIDS is so much harder than COVID. Speaking of other setbacks, but fast forwarding, I want to talk about [00:36:00] April 13th. 2021. The public health authorities put a pause on the J& J vaccine for a short period of time, but it obviously makes shocking news internationally.
And you write about this. So I guess first, this is just as we look at other setbacks, why did they do this? Why did the public health authorities? Put in, put on the pause. And what do you think the implications were? So, it's hard to remember back then, but, um, back then, we're talking April, the spring of 2021, Jane Jay's vaccine was emerging as probably the most popular, among the most popular of all the vaccines, largely because it was a one shot vaccine.
Um, and who, who doesn't want to And wasn't its distribution easier to, uh, Yes, exactly right. The distribution advantage is at least over Pfizer, in terms of refrigeration. And Moderna. Moderna has to be, both of those have to be [00:37:00] kept at cold temperatures. Pfizer is much colder than Moderna's, but, um, Pfizer, the BioNTech vaccine, to be clear.
Um, but right. The J and J1, in terms of storage, it was much easier transportation. So, so there was also, not only did that help domestically in the U. S., but when you start contemplating distributing vaccines globally, it could reach a lot more geographies, uh, with, with, I guess, a little more ease. Oh, much more ease.
Yes. Right. Exactly. In terms of, um, countries around the world that don't have the same ability to store, um, poor countries to store these vaccines in cold temperatures and give them out quickly in terms of distribution, et cetera, the J and J1, AstraZeneca as well, but J and J1 didn't need to be kept at this, those kinds of temperatures.
And so And, and, you know, sports teams were embracing them. People, a lot of people just don't want to get two shots. I don't know. And it's hard enough to convince people to take one shot, um, to take one shot, two shots. A lot of people were worried and [00:38:00] maybe rightly so that people wouldn't roll up their sleeves for them.
So yeah, J& J was emerging as, um, maybe not quite as protective and effective. As the other, as the mRNA viruses, but a pretty solid one, and the figures were good, pretty convincing. And then there were instances in which the authorities discovered that some women, and they usually were, um, women, um, of childbearing age, were seeing blood clots.
And it was a controversial decision. They stepped in and they paused. Um, the distribution of the, of the vaccines and it was controversial because it was so rare. And there were some people saying, well, geez, we don't step in and, um, stop, uh, other kinds of, uh, medical procedures that have such rare instances of, of these kinds of side effects.
I mean, um, the pill, um, the women take the pill and, um, their instances. Incidences of side effects of even awful bad [00:39:00] side effects are higher than these, these J& J vaccines. So, so why aren't we helping these women? We care, we care more about, uh, we don't care as much about the women, um, um, childbearing women, uh, as we do, uh, when it comes to the vaccine.
So the response of the authorities, and I agree with them, is that, yeah. Had this J& J vaccine been the only one available, then we probably would have not worried and stepped in and not been as concerned because it is so rare, these incidences of, of the blood clots. But since we had alternatives, the Moderna and the Pfizer, they did step in, they looked into it.
They realized it took them a little bit. They realized that. Um, yes, uh, there are some of these cases, but they are, um, not enough, they're not prevalent enough to be especially concerned about it unless you are a woman in that, um, category of age and it's not a terrible idea to choose another vaccine at that point.
Do you think they, do you think they jumped the gun in terms of fueling the overall vaccine hesitancy? Um, [00:40:00] you know, gestalt, uh, among certain communities in the U. S. I don't. I think that some of those people that are resistant to vaccines would have been resistant either way and have proven resistant. I don't think I've seen any kind of data suggesting that this move about J& J is, uh, something that undermines broad, uh, broad confidence in the vaccines.
Uh, otherwise you would see these people embracing the mRNA vaccines. And I see more concern from people about mRNA than I do the J& J or, uh, approach. So I think it was the right decision at the time. So Moderna and Pfizer, uh, and not just the pharmaceutical companies, but all the distribution efforts and a whole bunch of adjacent companies, Uh, that were involved in various, uh.
Tracks and elements of, of this whole vaccination miracle, um, that you write about. I can't help but think when reading your book, and I've [00:41:00] commented on this in other episodes of this podcast, that it's a uniquely American experience, which is the critics, the critics have been fiercely critical of the U.
S. System during a pandemic, uh, that the system is to decent. Our system of government is to see decentralized, right? 3143 counties in the United States. Actually, if you count all the territories, then it's the equivalent of 3, 243 counties in the United States, each county or almost every county has its own health commissioner and independent, uh, agency and autonomous decision making and trying to run a country and manage through a public health crisis with that kind of decentralization is really, really hard and people are pointing to contrasting it to European governments and where it's so much more efficient, top down, well organized, very centralized on the one hand.
On the other hand, One could argue without that decentralized, very entrepreneurial spirit [00:42:00] and system, free market system in the United States, we may not have had all that innovation right here in the United States that led to this incredible success story that you read about. I think it's very true. Uh, Both the fact that it's a very American crisis and it was very American, um, s solution, uh, in terms of the vaccine.
So a crisis meaning that w w we, we have, we're decentralized, as you said. We've got, uh, an ethos in many parts of the country. And I've traveled little towns in Oklahoma and Texas and North Dakota for a previous book I did called The Frackers and I got to know some of the people there and they think, uh, in a unique way.
They don't want to be told what to do. They're very independent, uh, speaking. Something that I Can't necessarily relate to frankly, um, but I understand, you know, that they don't want to be told and, and sometimes mandates are the kind of last thing they want to hear about. And, uh, that isn't a very American for good or for bad, uh, [00:43:00] characteristic.
Whereas, you know, comparing to some of these other countries that. handled COVID better. There's more of an ethos of togetherness and wearing a mask. You go through Asia. They've, they were masked even before all this, obviously. Um, and looking out for each other. There's such an independence in, in America.
And, and also this whole new feeling that I'm an expert. Everyone's an expert. You know, I saw something on YouTube and therefore I'm going to ignore what my internist who I've been going to for 20 or 30 years has to say. So. That's kind of the sad part of that's led us to, um, dealing with this in such a poor way in our country, sadly, as some, some things that are characteristic of America.
But I also think, um, that, and I believe there's no way we could have developed these vaccines, these miracle vaccines anywhere else but in America. You could say, well, yeah, in, in, in Mainz, Germany, that's where Biontech is and that's where they did so much of the science, but I've talked to Ugar Sahin. The Turkish born immigrant to Germany who said there's no way without the American [00:44:00] support and I'm talking about investors, the IPO that we mentioned earlier today, um, the, the, the innovation from, from America.
There's no way. And again, he, they did a lot of stuff. They followed a lot of stuff that Moderna was doing in, in Cambridge, Massachusetts in terms of the scientific breakthroughs. Um, and, and just sort of the. Entrepreneurship and I'm not talking about financial entrepreneurship. These, these labs, these scientific labs, the, the, um, scientists deep in these labs, the researchers that I've talked to, and they slog and they go through frustrations and they come up with innovations.
It just really impresses me. Uh, and it strikes me as just very American. I agree the perseverance and frankly. The upside, the hope for, for fame and fortune and the incentive to make a lot of money. That's huge and hugely important and rightfully so. If these guys want to get rich and famous and they're also creating healthy, um, vaccines and, and, and, uh, protective, um, medicines for us, good for them.
And. Yeah, it took investors to step up and write checks for years for Moderna. Um, and, and these [00:45:00] companies floated stocks, obviously in American Stock Exchange, but these investors, VCs, others, they, there was no guarantee that it was going to be of, of success. There was no proof really. Moderna was a very secretive company.
They weren't releasing much information. They weren't sharing what they were doing. It took real guts on the part of investors. And listen, I hate to be sort of a, an apologist in any way for Wall Street and for Big Pharma, but Wall Street and Big Pharma. Save the day here. They're not always, um, um, uh, looking out for us.
Um, there's reasons for criticism, but we have to give them deep gratitude when it comes to these vaccines that they spent years of frustrated work and innovative work that we need to be grateful for. It's amazing because at the same time that we're, you know, among young people in the United States, there's the rise of Support for embracing of socialism, you know, you see this in all the public opinion surveys and yet at the same time that it was this exact system that you're describing, investors, entrepreneurs, pharmaceutical companies, [00:46:00] entrepreneurial scientists in labs slaving away that got us out of this pandemic.
Very much so, very much so. The other interesting thing is how many immigrants are involved, uh, in, in, at the forefront of, of these companies, of the research that people have talked to, both the, um, unheralded the CEO of Pfizer, Greek immigrant. The CEO of Moderna, uh, a French immigrant. The CEO of, of Biontech is a Turkish immigrant to Germany, but it, you're right, it's the leadership of the, and you're saying it's not just the leadership.
Exactly. And I write in my book about, uh, Immigrant after immigrant. Um, um, you read it. I don't go through the characters necessarily, but the researchers along the way, in other words, the, the, the 1993 researcher in Duke, uh, Ellie Gulboa, an immigrant from Israel, the, um, Kariko and Ed Penn, who made the breakthroughs with Drew Weissman a few years later when it came to, came to MRNA.
Now these were, um, unheralded at the time, but when we look back on it, and that's kind of why I wrote the book, to give these people credit, throughout Majorna, people deep in within Majorna, a lot of immigrants, hard working people, it's a [00:47:00] very American book. Staying on that theme, what was your reaction to when the federal government was pushing the pharmaceutical companies to share their IP internationally and just kind of dump it into the international marketplace and potentially losing the, a great degree of the upside that they, I believe, earned because of the risks they had been taking.
So, it's a tough question, um, and they're still, um, feeling pressure and they will continue to do so. I think it's, uh, a much tougher issue than both, people on both sides kind of, uh, uh, suggest. Uh, so, you need to create incentives for these biotech companies. They need huge incentives because hundreds of millions of dollars, even more, billions of dollars were raised by both Moderna and BioNTech.
in periods when there was very [00:48:00] little, uh, reason for investors to write checks other than maybe a huge home run down the road. So if you're going to say, well, yeah, um, you can help us, you can write these big checks, but we're going to limit the upside down the road. I don't know. For the next huge disease challenge, they're going to have the same incentive to write those checks.
Um, so you need to create those incentives and it's also the case that this is really hard stuff. I mean, again, my book writes, I write about decades of hard work and incremental improvements and it's almost like a baton or a relay race where you're passing a baton, someone makes a breakthrough, but it's not enough and you pass it on to the next one.
So it took a lot of. hard work and to just suggest that, well, all you do is give the IP to some other country, some other effort, and they can produce these vaccines. No. Materna to get that manufacturing plant, they've had one manufacturing plant in Norway, Massachusetts. They spent years trying to get it right.
And it's going to be hard for another. [00:49:00] else, uh, in Africa or Asia or somewhere else to just kind of take the IP and produce it. Now that all said, Moderna is worth 135 billion today. They're sitting on ungodly amounts of profit. Um, 135, 135 billion, 135 billion market cap company. Yes. Yeah. 135 up from like 3.
5 or something. I don't know. Right. A year or two ago. Yeah. So, um, They're sitting on their own. Many of the top guys are billionaires right now. So to, um, put pressure on them to be, um, uh, to help it to hand over more and to be, to share more. I don't think it's a terrible idea to the extent that they can.
Um, I do have to say, talking to those people there, and I'm not any kind of big defender, I just know what they've gone through, they're going all out and um, they've sold their production to the first bidders and that's the United States and a lot of people in the West. You could say, well, they had the money and it's, it is sad and equity, these, um, the vaccines are not [00:50:00] equitable and sadly, um, but the manufacturing and the production.
has been taken for a lot of vaccines. They've scooped it up already. The West and these people are going all out and I've talked to them and I end off the book talking about how, yeah, they're really wealthy, but they are psychologically damaged. And I'm not overstaying that the people within Moderna, they've been going all out.
They feel the weight of the world. Some of them are beating themselves up for not doing enough, even though they've saved. countless lives, they figure, well, had we gotten less sleep, even though they got very little of it, had we, had we gotten less sleep, we could have saved more people. And so, and, and I talked to the president and he kind of says his goal of the next year is to somehow heal, help his people heal from this past experience.
So I think we need to be understanding of that as well. Yeah. The system is a fragile system. So it, when it works. And it produces these great innovations, we say, all right, spread the wealth, uh, but, you know, to your [00:51:00] point, there's a lot of incentives built into this fragile system that keep people innovating and working hard and having that lab mentality where they're throwing a thousand things against the wall every day to see what sticks and sleeping four hours a night and, you know, and there should be a payoff for this incredible sweat equity and, um, that they, that they have and that they put into these projects.
Um, In terms of future applications of mRNA, so mRNA is this, is this huge success, where do you see it going now, uh, in terms of the future of life sciences? Because it's not just about COVID, it could be about a whole other range of illness and disease. Yeah, so I'm optimistic. I wouldn't say I'm confident, but I've got a lot of optimism.
Uh, why, uh, I'll start off why I'm, I'm not confident, uh, is because you could argue that COVID is an exception to the rule. Many other maladies, diseases, you need to target certain parts of the body. And we haven't [00:52:00] really been able to do that yet with mRNA. Uh, as the basis of a vaccine or, or a drug. And it's actually important to remember that Moderna started off as a drug company, not a vaccine company.
Again, no one really wanted to be in vaccines. Moderna didn't either. It raised hundreds of millions of dollars, even over a billion dollars on the hope that they could do drugs and they have not been able to succeed when it comes to drugs. No one else has either. I think part of it is again. You need to target certain parts of the body.
I think with heart, there'll be some heart, um, drugs that will be effective. You can do, handle the heart a little bit better. But so far, it's been difficult proving mRNA effective when it comes to other kinds of vaccines and drugs. That all said, part of why, um, one can argue they should be allowed to make, uh, these ungodly amounts of profit is because these companies, I'm talking about, Moderna, Biontech, and some of the others are key in my book.
They're taking all that money and they are plowing it into [00:53:00] new, new drugs and new medicines and new vaccines. And we're hopeful. I'm very hopeful they're going to, it's going to be successful. They're not sitting back and just counting their money. They're targeting. Cancer, they're targeting Ms. Um, lupus.
The idea being, uh, for, for some of these, I know BioNTech believes this well, just like they've been able to turn on to rev up to stir the immune system. When it comes to COVI, maybe we can turn off the immune system first and help people that are dealing with immune, uh, related issues where their, um, immune system goes into overdrive and just doesn't behave properly.
Wouldn't that be a wonder? Um, malaria. I mean, um, Adrian Hill. I write about a really difficult person, um, controversial scientist at the University of Oxford. Not liked by many in that field. He could be really hard on his colleagues, on peers, etc. His whole life is dedicated to malaria and finding a malaria vaccine.
And he's optimistic and he may be able to figure it out. Um, [00:54:00] AIDS. I mean, Dan Baruch, the J& J guy, his whole life is AIDS. So I am optimistic that the talent that we've seen when it comes to COVID and the new resources that have developed thanks to all these profits are going to lead to real breakthroughs over the next few years.
I mean, you could really make an argument. You really could see it's possible to look back on this period as awful as it's been. And I've seen it up close and personal as we all have. As awful as this period has been, if it leads to cancer treatments, to treatments for, for MS, for lupus, for those kinds of things, it'll actually be all, I don't know, worthwhile.
It'll lead to all kinds of wonders. So I'm optimistic and hopeful about the future. Two other quick questions, maybe not quick. First, what did you learn during this process about the Chinese and Russian vaccines, the Sputnik and the Sinopharm vaccines? in terms of how you'd compare them both in development to our process and obviously we [00:55:00] know about their efficacy which is, uh, uneven.
Yeah, it's good but not great and not trustworthy like the extent that we're used to. Um, if they were the only ones in the world I think We'd all take them, frankly, but, um, it's not one I would roll up my sleeves for myself. So when it comes to the Russian, uh, Sputnik 1, um, do you remember when I spoke earlier about that Merck effort to build a vaccine against HIV?
They used a virus called Ad5 and led to, um, a real poor, really poorly result, disappointing, awful results. That is the basis that Ad five virus is the basis for the Sputnik, uh, vaccine. They combine it with another ad, ad adenovirus, and, and it's not, I don't wanna suggest that AD five is gonna hurt people.
No. The issue is that AD five is a virus that the body often has seen. It's a cold virus, it has experience with it. So as a result, it's on its wears. It's hard for this virus, it's harder for this virus to get into the body. [00:56:00] And do a thing meaning create a protein because the body's like, wait, I've seen this ad five before.
I had a cold a few years ago. I'm going to fight this thing off. And it's especially hard for ad five on repeated, uh, um, um, boosters, that kind of thing. So, uh, it's not a virus that's deal approach, I would think, but it's not a terrible one because again, they combined it with at five with, with another virus for their second shots.
So it's not terrible. The Chinese one is pretty good. They have different, a lot of different Chinese vaccines. They seem somewhat effective. They're they, um, uh, they're not terrible, but I know that they've had a lot of discussions with beyond tech about bringing the MRNA. vaccine, the Pfizer one to China.
So that kind of suggests they'd like to improve on what they've got. Last question about Operation Warp Speed. Do you think it becomes a model for future public private partnerships in the context of other crises we face, whether it's public health [00:57:00] or it could be, doesn't have to be in public health, but just the idea that people look at this.
I mean, it's interesting because it's at a time that there's high distrust of government and yet at the same time, high distrust of the markets and the finance community and business leaders. And science too. Science. High distrust of science. Exactly. And yet they all work together here. What, what can we do with this model?
So Yeah. I'd like to think it could be a model for the future, but I'm really pessimistic because it's a little bit like, I guess, you know, like the Marshall Plan. I mean, assuming one thinks that's a positive. After that, you know, we should do a Marshall Plan for this. We should do a Marshall Plan for that.
And on paper it makes sense, but you sort of need a crisis like this to focus the mind, get people working together. Um, it was an urgency, so sadly, we may need something like this. Hopefully, we don't have to deal with it, but [00:58:00] it did focus people to work together in extraordinary ways, as we talked about earlier, building a vaccine, developing it and manufacturing at the same time.
It's unprecedented. So, yes, on paper, it makes sense, but we're not a nation, sadly. We're not a people that plans ahead, you know, we plan ahead. Maybe for next week, not even next year, let alone, you know, the next decade. I mean, health officials have been warning about a coronavirus for years. We all, we've all seen those kind of, um, clips from, from people.
So to think that we're going to use this as some model be nice if we have that kind of, um, foresight and planning, but I'm a little skeptical in September of 2019, the council of economic advisors, the president's council of economic advisors. President Trump's Council of Economic Advisors produced a report titled Mitigating the Impact of Pandemic Influenza Through Vaccine Innovation.
And the report Obviously talks about the potential cost of a pandemic But this is 2019 september 2019. I reiterate I underline but they also in the report [00:59:00] talk about how a private public partnership could mitigate these costs and um, you know, so they were they were thinking ahead it was buried in the bowels of the you know old executive office building in the in the uh Trump administration.
I guess it got dusted off, but someone was thinking ahead. Yeah. So anyway, listen to end or assuming we're ending soon to end on a positive note Tony Fauci has long hoped for some vaccine method that can be developed quickly that you get the sequence of a virus some pathogen and And can quickly develop a vaccine to take it on.
And that is what mRNA is. All you need is the genetic sequence. As I write in my book, once that was released, these guys were off to the races. And similarly, the boosters, we're gonna get different kind of boosters for different variants. You can create them easily with mRNA. You have to test it, etc. But we're in a new era of vaccine development, thanks to mRNA, in which Yeah, if you get the genetic [01:00:00] sequence, you can It's like coding.
It's like, you know, you can email around code. And, and just build vaccines on the fly. Yes, exactly. And the, the original goal, the hope was that our bodies could be, could manufa, be manufacturing um, facilities, uh, making drugs and vaccines for ourselves. And that's the hope with mRNA. So, um, that is, um, a way to, um, anticipate and react to future crises as well by turning to mRNA.
And that's the hope for the future. Last question for you. Greg and then we'll let you go. Uh, I'm a big fan of a number of your books. Uh, and I, I find a, a style, uh, consistent in, in a number of them, at least the ones I've read, that I have found in this one too, which is you write about unsung heroes. Um, I mean, that was certainly the case in, in, in Frackers.
Um, you, you, so was, first of all, is, am I right in [01:01:00] identifying that, that sort of bias of yours towards a certain kind of, Story and storytelling and characters a and b was it obvious to you early? I guess based on some of the things you said earlier that there were these people that we would never hear of And you want to write about them.
Yes, so I write the same story as a knock on me potentially, but um, i'm i'm a real Um fascinated by it's not even so much unsung unlikely heroes. So when it came to the financial crisis 2008 Who, who should have anticipated the, the crisis? It should have been the big banks, it should have been the big short sellers, the experts in mortgages.
They were all caught flat footed and instead it was this guy John Paulson who I wrote a book about and his colleagues who, on their last legs on Wall Street, 50, 60 year old kind of people that have been kicking around forever, they're the ones who made the big killing? That doesn't make sense. So then, yeah, with the frackers who should have led this energy revolution that has made us, I don't think people appreciate this either.
Dan, we're, we've been exporting oil to the [01:02:00] Saudis, crude to the Saudis over the past few, that's crazy concept. Anybody I remember in the back of my mind, you know, I remember being in the backseat of my. Parents' car in 1973 in a long line for a gas at, at the pump. And, and now to, to, to say we've got this surplus of oil and gas and it's not thanks to BP and Exxon and Chevron and Shell, it was like these independent frackers and that I wrote about.
And so I do like that theme and, and, and I wrote a, a couple years ago I wrote a book about. Um, the best, the greatest investor in history, the greatest traders, it's, it's called the man who solved the market about this group in Renaissance Technologies and Jim Simons. They're scientists, they're mathematicians, they're not, um, they didn't go to business school.
They didn't read the classics that I did, the financial classics growing up. They don't care about that kind of stuff. So yeah, I am partial to that theme in here too. Who should have saved us? It should have been Merck, the vaccine giants, instead it was this company Moderna that people thought might've been a.
Fraud going into 2020. Yeah. I am just sort of fascinated by that theme. And I also think there are life lessons. Like I, I like. You know, [01:03:00] you can learn from these people because they're usually self confident, they ignore the conventional wisdom, they, um, zig when everybody else zags, and there's some value to learning from these people.
It's a terrific book. It's amazing how fast you turned it around. A Shot to Save the World, the inside story of the life or death race for a COVID 19 vaccine. I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I encourage everyone to read it, even more importantly to purchase it. Whether or not you read it, um, and, uh, Greg, thanks for, for joining us for this conversation.
That was a lot of fun. Really good, um, uh, discussion that you don't get this kind of depth, uh, most everywhere else in the media world. So, uh, I appreciate your time. All right. Take care. Thanks. Thanks, guys.
That's our show for today. If you want to follow Greg Zuckerman's work, you can find him on Twitter. That's at G Zuckerman. G Z U C K E R M A N. And of course you can find all of his work [01:04:00] at the Wall Street Journal, and you can find any of his books, all of which I recommend, at barnesandnoble. com, or your favorite independent bookstore, or that other e commerce site, I think they're calling it Amazon.
Also be on the lookout for our transition to our new series. about these Revenant 2020s, but more info on that to follow. Post Corona is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.