Transcripts For CSPAN3 Gregory Zuckerman A Shot To Save The World 20240707

i think you for joining us tonight. i'm stephen schmidt from the greenwich library, and i'm delighted to welcome you to live at greenwich library. this series is made possible through the support of the grinch library board of trustees and contributions by generous donors. thanks also to the greenwich economic forum or co-sponsoring this program. we're also delighted to have c-span's book tv here as well. a few reminders please keep your mask on at all times. please silence your cell phone and refrain from using it and taking any photos during the event. books will be available for signing after the event outside the theater and if you have any questions for gregory, we will take them after his talk. greg zuckerman is the author of the greatest trade ever and the frackers. and is a special writer. at the wall street journal he is a three-time winner of the gerald globe award the highest honor in business journalism. at the journal of zuckerman writes about financial firms personalities and trades as well as hedge funds and other investing and business topics. he also appears regularly on cnbc. fox business and other networks and radio stations around the globe. this evening. he'll be talking about his latest book. i shot to save the world which tells the story of a small group of unlikely and untested scientists and executives who raced to come up with the covid-19 vaccine. they scrambled to turn their lights to work into life-saving vaccines in a matter of months each gunning to make a big breakthrough. and beat each other for the glory that a vaccine guaranteed and it could be said that thanks to them. we are together in this room tonight. this event has been several years in the making greg was originally scheduled to speak here in april 2020 on his book the man who saw the market. but please join me in finally welcoming greg zuckerman to greenwich library. good evening, everybody. hope everybody is doing well and healthy and it's nice to see people in person. i apologize. i'm the only one who gets to not wear a mask this morning this evening as the the speaker. so i apologize for that. but hopefully we're entering a world where things are improving a little bit and maybe down the road. we can all enjoy a mask free existence. so this evening is long time in making i do want to thank my host stephen and others who worked hard to make this event possible. we were gonna do i wrote a book in 2019. to call the man the man who solved the market so we we're gonna plan an event then then it didn't work out. events changed in early and later in 2020, but i'm so thrilled to be able to do it tonight. i am going to talk about my new book a shot to save the world. i'm gonna talk about why i wrote it. i'm gonna talk a little bit bit about why these vaccines are are underappreciated why they're unlikely as well in so many different ways and the people behind them are even more in the methods or even more unlikely and i'm gonna make some observations about this era and maybe draw some lessons from the endeavor the successful efforts to to deliver these vaccines, so first i'll explain why i wrote this book. and why a guy like me a financial reporter. i've been at the journal since 1996 a long time would write about this topic which is a book about science and in many ways. so here i was in my basement in suburban, new jersey. in the spring and early summer of 2020 and it was a very discouraging time. it was a difficult time. we all remember that period it's gonna be one that we will never forget. we'll tell our grandchildren and children and and others about it. i think in years to come. and i was looking for a reason for optimism for hope it was a time when there's a lot of pessimism out there and i started doing some work. i'm a reporter at the wall street journal and i started hearing about those who were chasing a vaccine trying to develop shots to protect us all and it gave me some hope there was a weird interesting contrast between those in my life and and all of our lives. it was a time when people were down and worried and concerned and there was a contrast between the researchers that i started speaking with who were upbeat and optimistic and what's really fascinating. is that just a few months earlier. it was all changed. there was a different dichotomy. i i have 2020 late january. i was traveling in the middle east that was in israel. i was in london. i was walking through heathrow airport. and i wasn't wearing a mask. my i was with my two sons and they were they had heard about this. we all had heard about this virus and they were a little more concerned than i was they were wearing a mask, but i read what we all had read that not really supposed to be wearing the mask. maybe it was detrimental and also frankly people were giving me looks and they were looking at me like odd as i walked through heathrow with my makeshift mask and i ended up just taking it off and and frankly many of us have not most of us in january february of 2020. we're not that concerned. yeah. there was a virus in china, but didn't we all so go through earlier coronaviruses mirrors sars these things kind of go away zika etc people get all nervous and scared then in the end. it's not that big a concern. so many of us were relatively unconcerned about this virus, but at that moment. the people who i write about in my book were scared and fearful and worried and many of them decided to try to do something so back then in early 2020. they were really worried and many of us were not but a few months later it flipped and i was worried and concerned for my family and many of us in my family did get sick. i have an uncle who died with covid. it wasn't clear if it was because of covid or how it contributed at a neighbor who passed away it was a difficult period and yet i drew a lot of hope and optimism from those i started writing about so that's one reason. i wrote the book. the other is that i don't think we fully appreciate the enormity of this accomplishment this achievement. it is the greatest achievement of modern science to develop these vaccines that are so effective and so safe and to do so so quickly. i think we're a little too close to the achievement to appreciate it to fully appreciate it even those of us who are pro vaccine who are comfortable taking these vaccines comfortable with the relative risks the limited risks are still i don't think appreciate enough we go in there and hi. yeah, we roll up to slaves and we maybe complain a little bit about maybe a side effect or two for a day or two, but as i'll demonstrate i think shortly it is very conceivable that these vaccines would not have been ready. even for for several years and we have to be appreciative of how fast they were developed and how effective they are. and again, they are modern scientists science sciences a greatest achievements and they're also modern finances greatest achievement as i'll demonstrate i think in a few minutes the role that signs played and these vaccines could not have been developed were not for finance. so that's another reason why i set out to write the book to explain how these vaccines evolved and how they were developed but often is often in at least in my case when i write a book it kind of takes a little while till i really is the real reason i'm writing it in other words the theme that has captured me and that excites me and frankly. there's a common theme in all my work and all my books and it only kind of hits me as i've thrown myself into it and as after i've agreed to write the book and i'm up, you know until 3 am most nights trying to understand and talk to people and dig and get behind the scenes and the theme is the unexpected hero and the unexpected achievement. um, my first book is called the greatest trade ever and it's about those who anticipated the financial meltdown of 2008 and if you think about it who should have been prepared and made money from it and did the best during that period it should have been the banks, right? the banks are the ones who created the toxic mortgage product that made everyone kind of sick and brought down the financial system and they were the ones hurt among the most hurt by by that era short sellers didn't do well mortgage experts housing experts. they were caught flat-footed and who did anticipate the financial crisis in 2008. it's a bunch of odd characters. i write about in that book a few years after that. i wrote a book called the frackers about this energy revolution all of a sudden we're producing so much oil and gas they were actually exporting it and it wasn't chevron and bp and and exxon. it was a bunch of odd interesting quirky individuals, north dakota and oklahoma, texas people you will not have expect. and then i did in 2019. it's called a book called the man who solved the market. it's about the greatest investment firm hedge funds ever and it's not individuals who even care about trading when they grew up they didn't go to business school. they didn't read about buffett and peter lynch. some of them aren't even capitalists. they're socialist. they're not even sure they are and they're scientists. they're mathematicians and yet they developed the greatest trading firm in history. so that same theme unlikely heroes it struck me. i'm in my basement in new jersey writing about the chase for these vaccines and the first company that i that struck me that captured me that really intrigued me was moderna and madura is among the most unlikely heroes out there and i'll explain why so moderna was started around 2010. the ceo's name is stefan ben cell staff on ben cell and france. he is among the most difficult bosses you can find he is a hard driving individual early on at moderna there in cambridge, massachusetts a biotech. he pushed his people so hard that they were collapsing in the office in the parking lot of moderna and cambridge at home hitting their heads being rushed to the hospital bleeding. he fired people very quickly and easily he could be really difficult. and yet he was also inspirational he had this ability to inspire people that that we're gonna be the ones he literally said to his people there's gonna gonna be a crisis someday. we are going to be the company that steps up and saves lives and half the people working there. we're miserable and didn't like the fact that he didn't appreciate their work and could be a really difficult boss, but other people said no, we appreciate the fact that he leaves in what we're trying to do and in saving lives and changing history and there's this really real contrast within the company and eventually those that couldn't really handle his difficult personality exited and he brought in people that could and but that took a few years and frankly by the beginning of this pandemic on eve of the pandem, but we're talking january 2020. there really was no other company of size. they weren't big, but they weren't small that was filled and dealing and dealt with so much suspicion as moderna and stuff on band cell. they had never produced the drug. they never produced a vaccine they had shifted. they originally were called modern therapeutics which is drugs and they had shifted from drugs to vaccines because they could not make vex. i'm sorry. they could not make drugs work. they couldn't discover develop effective and safe and approved drug, so they had to shift a vaccines and vaccines have never been a popular business for companies in the world of pharmaceuticals for a number of reasons partly. it's because vaccines take a long time. sometimes you develop a vaccine. it's very expensive and you don't need it after by the time you develop it. you know the pathogen dissipates and if you remember the earlier mers and sars and zika etc that happens often and if you think about it a vaccine you give to someone once in a lifetime maybe a little bit more frequently once every few years. whereas a drug i take a statin every night. so um in the world of pharmaceuticals in the world of biotech, no one really wants to be vaccine company. so the fact that moderna had to shift to vaccines from drugs. caught a lot of people's attention and they said these guys do not have any really approach that's gonna work and stefan bensell himself himself was someone that people a lot of suspicions about he wasn't a scientist. he's a harvard business school graduate. he is a very out persuasive person. he's a great salesman. he was able to raise a lot of money but a lot of the people that he raised money from weren't sort of biotech experts. they were sort of sovereign wealth funds from the golf that kind of thing and here he was raising billions of dollars for the dream of using mrna and we're gonna get to it in a second what mrna is the dream of using mrna to develop vaccines and a lot of people buy 2020 had enough of stefan by itself and had enough of a moderna. the stock was down 50% right from its ipo price people were rolling their eyes. he kept shifting their goal and one other weird odd thing people people start comparing him and i think it's really unfair, but people were really starting to compare stuff on ben sell to elizabeth holmes the former founder ceo of theranos. and again, i don't think it was fair, but there were a lot of commonalities neither of them had ever really were very open about their science at least for a number of years moderno wasn't they were not very transparent. they didn't appear at industry conferences and such seminars. they didn't publish for a number of years later they did but for a number of years they didn't and there were other weird similarities stefan ben cell and elizabeth holmes both their outgoing. they're persuasive. they're good fundraisers and they both love black turtlenecks, so weird commonality so they had that in common and again by 2020 early 2020. they were a company that many people suspected might be i fraud is a strong word but maybe exaggerating their okay their abilities and the people within maderna were very frustrated by that. they were aware of all the suspicions out there and they knew that they were making progress on their approach. yeah, they didn't have a vaccine. yeah, they didn't have a drug, but they thought they were making progress. they're making headway and they're like, why does everyone point fingers at us? why is everybody suspect us? then this this virus emerges and stephon betzel we're talking january 2020 says you know what? yeah, we don't have anything that to speak of in terms of a vaccine or a drug, but we do have this approach using mrna and i think we can use it to develop a vaccine pretty quickly and if you think about it, it was a the ultimate risk because had they so he said guys we have to shift to try to develop a vaccine and it had it failed people would have gone from rolling their eyes around modern. it's had given up they would have just kind of say okay enough for this company. we've given them the benefit of the doubt way too long. look they failed on this this new endeavor. it's not gonna work so they had a lot of risk they gambled when they said we're gonna set aside our existing work and we're gonna focus on a covid-19 vaccine and yet they were able to pull it off. and it's a remarkable surprising achievement on their part. so majora is a very unlikely hero. i'll talk about another unlikely hero hero as uber sahin ubersohin is the ceo of becoming called beyond tech. he and his wife aslam tricky. they're both scientists both very serious. they're both quirky and unusual. they live in an apartment in mines germany their originally were both turkish immigrants from turkey, but they live in mind now they live in an apartment. uber takes its bike to work every day doesn't own a car they hum when they go on vacation uber brings these hulking big computers with him to these resorts and he literally so he can continue doing his work. i mean literally brings stacks of papers to the pool where his daughter swims and he's a bit of an obsessive and serious researcher. and what's interesting is that he's not somebody who's an infectious disease expert whatsoever what he and his wife have always been passionate about is developing a vaccine to protect against cancer. they've always been very very focused on cancer and helping people with cancer and finding the solution for cancer and they spent years on it. and once again just like moderna, they didn't have that much to show for it by early 2020 by january 2020 no vaccine no drug, nothing like that. they were a mid-sized company a small company a company in mind, germany. and yet he said he's having breakfast with his wife aslam tricky. in january 2020 in an outdoor cafe in mines, and he he said to his wife. i just read about this new virus in wuhan china, and i'm really worried and aslam's like oh, you know, don't you remember that last coronavirus a few years ago? nothing ever emerged from that not the last that long and and and and ooga says no, this is different. and why did why was he so sure? why was he so certain something bad was coming is because what he read he was smart to pick up on that is that there was asymptomatic spread of this virus as opposed to the earlier coronaviruses those didn't those were lethal too, but those didn't spread the world because we could isolate those who had the disease whereas with this new virus there was asymptomatic spread and at that point, we don't know who has it. we don't know who's gonna get it it any new by then. it was probably spreading and he realized that wuhan is an enormous city. it's bigger than new york and chicago combined. so he put two and two together. he also saw the flights coming out of wuhan he realized those probably spreading all over the world and he said yeah, we haven't developed anything and we're not even infectious disease experts were we're cancer people but one of our approaches that's not even our main one one of our approaches that we've been developing is using mrna and i'm gonna get to mrna in a few minutes and explain it. but it was one of their approaches. they used immunotherapy. they used others, but one of their approaches was mrna and ubersai and said, you know what maybe we can use mrna to develop a vaccine for this new virus and they threw themselves into it and it's to their credit that they picked up on the virus early and that they threw themselves into it when others didn't and um, i want it really want to emphasize that theme of unlikely heroes because take a step back for a second who should have been expected to step up and and save the day and and develop a vaccine and effective vaccine to say lives. it should have been the vaccine experts companies that produce vaccines right merck merc is considered the preeminent vaccine company measles moms. rubella. that's all merck. they've got a history of it and i write about it in my book. it's a fascinating history about their company and evolution and their efforts in terms of vaccines and i my book about how in early 2020 when ogre sahin and stefan bad cell were getting scared about this new virus the some scientists within murk also got nervous and concerned and they said hey, we're merck. we should be the one stepping up here and creating a vaccine but others said well, i don't know. what about the fact that those earlier coronaviruses died out. we're making a lot of progress another really important areas like cancer research. we don't want to take our eye off the ball there. it's really expensive to develop a new vaccine and it was a rift within merck. i write about in the book and as a result, they didn't go a hundred percent chasing this new vaccine for the new virus. they put a little effort into it and they eventually developed a drug. that's somewhat helpful, but they're not the ones who stepped up to help us. so again, they they're the more i talk about unlikely heroes. they're the people that really should have stepped up, but it's not just a merc. santa fe gsk. those are the vaccine giants and instead again. moderna beyond tech and some others. i write about in my book. there is a individual named adrian hill. adrian is probably the most house i put this disliked scientists that i can identify in that world. he is notorious for standing up at industry events seminars conferences and just ripping into his colleagues their approaches. you don't know what you're doing. this isn't gonna work. that's a foolish approach. he does not. mince mince words. he is very brutally honest with his colleagues and yet he himself had really nothing to show for his years and years of work. he's a university of oxford. he runs a senior group there and by early 20020 he too had make some progress. he's got a different approach. just not mrna. i'll talk about it a second his approach, but he didn't really have that much to show for his years of work despite his comfort in critiquing others. in his in his field and frankly some people who were subjected to his. critiques they didn't mind them so much. they said hey, he's helping me improve my approach and i could handle the criticism. that's the scientific method and people sometimes kimmy critical of each other and there's some value in that and other people joe had real difficulty. with the insults and the the invective so and but but you know h, he does get credit. they eventually did develop a vaccine that is very helpful and is very and not so much. we don't need it in the united states. it was never approved and never tried to be approved the united states, but it's the oxford astrazeneca vaccine and it's available in uk. it was very popular and it's in other countries and it's been effective not quite as effective as the mrna ones but it's effective and again unlikely characters. um one last company i'll talk about is novavax. novavax is a company outside of washington dc and they spent years developing different vaccines and by early in january 2020 again on the eve of this pandemic. there's stock was about three dollars a share. they only had money to last for a few months and then we're gonna go bankrupt employees. we're sending resumes out. and yet they risked it all and said, hey, we're gonna try to to develop a vaccine for covid. and they developed a really effective one. we don't need it right now. we have so many good ones in the united states, but elsewhere it's gonna prove really a helpful and already it's in some countries in asia and it's gonna be in africa too. so very very much unexpected here in an unexpected achievement. so i'm gonna talk briefly about so i talked already about unexpected heroes now, i'm gonna talk about an unexpected approach and that is mrna and i assume we're all familiar with the term. we know mrna stands for messenger rna, which i'm sure some people are experts in or familiar with and other people maybe could use a little refresher or education. i'll do it briefly messenger rna is a molecule. we all have it inside of us it transports the genetic message from the dna in the cell to the part of the cell or proteins are created. that keep us alive so in other words message rna is is we're born with it and we rely on it and it's crucial that we would create it helps us deliver those messages so we can create proteins. so scientists said well, hold on a second this messenger rna in our body. we rely on it it helps develop any you create any kind of protein what if we created it developed it synthetically in the laboratory. so in other words just like sugar is natural and you find sugar in nature. you can also create in the lab and it's pretty similar same kind of thing researchers said well, what if we could develop message rna in the laboratory and then you say to yourself? well, why would they want to do that? well, then you can send a message to the body to create any kind of protein and as a result you can create any kind of drug or vaccine in the body, right? it sounds like a brilliant idea and an obvious one, but just as quickly as people got excited about the idea of creating. developing synthetic version of mrna molecule in laboratory to inject it in the body and to create any kind of protein just as quickly as people got excited. they said yeah, maybe not let's not waste our time and that's because mrna gets chopped up by the body. excuse me, a momentarily and it gets eliminated and i'm simplifying it but the point being that mrna is a short lived molecule and it's not one. you can really depend on how are you going to actually build a vaccine or a drug that depends on this mri and his molecule gets chopped up and eliminated quickly. so and the other reasons too you can inject it in the body and the immune system fights it all through all kinds of mechanisms. they're to recognize a foreign body like mrna such that it's risky to base any kind of therapeutic any kind of vaccine on mrna. so the conventional wisdom for years in the world of science was don't waste your time studying working with basing any drug or vaccine on mrna. that was the conventional wisdom. that was what the experts all said. it's funny i talk to audiences often about about my book and they're always some vaccine hesitant kind of all the audience and i love discussing and i hope there's some some people here potentially who are a little bit vaccine hesitant, but one of the concerns you always hear about mrna as well. it's gonna it's gonna change my dna. it's gonna stay in my body and no that's the fascinating thing. nobody ever wanted to work with mrna in the world of science because it gets chopped up and eliminated so quickly they were like role in their eyes. don't waste your time if you're in the world of science, you're gonna you're gonna base your career on this molecule that gets eliminated no and yet the people i write about in my book ignore the conventional wisdom. they said yeah. yeah, we know all the challenges of mrna. we're gonna try to overcome them. and it started with an individual a doctor named john wolf. i write about who in the late 1980s. first in san diego and then in wisconsin university of wisconsin. he treated children with genetic abnormalities, and it was heartbreaking stuff families would bring children to him from all over the world and he was really good at diagnosing what the issue was and the parents were very appreciative. sometimes they develop new diets for the children. that would help them live a better life, but john wolf was frustrated because he wanted to cure these these children not just give them a new diet. so he at night he'd go into the laboratory and try to figure out some approach that might work and he was the first one to show that despite the skepticism. there's potential for using mrna as part of maybe a vaccine maybe a drug to create a protein in the body. that's all i kind of showed the possibilities and my book in some ways is about you can picture it as a relay race almost where you have a group of scientists that are running and making progress and it looks like they're gonna win the race and then they stumble and fall and they kind of passed the baton as it were to the next group. so it was a group at duke. i write about ellie gulboa was the leader of that that endeavor and he picked up that baton and he made more progress on using mrna to produce a protein in the body. he actually didn't even work in the body. he was just working in the laboratory. it took a while before they were actually finding some evidence in the body itself, but that's what the scientific process is and in some ways. my book is just as much about the process and innovation and creativity and how to keep researchers going for so many years. i mean frankly i learned in to appreciate so much those behind the researchers the scientists behind these these efforts because um, so i'm a journalist. i'm a writer. i like to produce work and share it with the world that wall street journal takes me a few days sometimes for an article maybe a few weeks a month or so at most my books. i try to they're always kind of timely i put them out. i like to share them with the world at most i'll spend a year and a half two years on my on my books these researchers. they will go into the deep in the bowels of these laboratories all over the country all over the world and hope to make some incremental progress and half the time or more than half the time they run into some roadblock and they have to give up the effort and that persistence that creativity resilience stubbornness. i really i came to really appreciate and admire and i wish i kind of shared some of those traits but that's what it took to get mrna to work. so eventually there were two scientists that maybe some people have read about carico and wise men university of pennsylvania, they wrote a groundbreaking paper to show that. yes, the body can create proteins when when mrna is injected. you can read about the details in my book and it was groundbreaking stuff. but but was largely forgotten and people don't realize this creek and white's been tried to start a biotech company. they couldn't raise any money people were like, yeah interesting paper, but was kind of forgotten and it's not really we didn't think it's people didn't think it was gonna be a applicable and you could actually use it for anything so it took a couple other researchers including a real character. i'm named luigi warren at mit who gets no credit who kind of rediscovered this paper and said, you know what that paper from a few years ago. maybe we can use it. excuse me. so again, is that that baton that was passed for one researcher or one group of researcher to another and that's what it took to make mrna work and eventually we got to the point at the end and nih and researchers. there were very important too the government helped. so it was private industry. it was public as well. but it got to the point where at the end of 2019. there were a number of researchers around the world who thought they had an approach that could work if a new virus emerged they weren't sure they suspected they were pretty confident, but they didn't know for sure. there's no certainty involved. but majora beyond tech some people at the nih a few others. they thought this mrn anything could work, but it was no sure thing one more reason to and gonna emphasize this. we need to appreciate the enormity of this achievement and i don't think we really do and again, we weren't sure that the thing would work at the end in 2019 early 2020, but it's thanks to these researchers who said we're gonna we're gonna of you, we're going to prove the world and we're going to throw ourselves into this thing so that those are two of the the vaccines. that's the pfizer met beyond tech vaccine and that's the modern vaccine. those are mrna vaccines the other vaccine approach. i write about i start with aids and the search for an hiv vaccine. and i do so for a few reasons and that's kind of how i started starting my book partly because i keep doing this research and i'm writing about the vaccine approaches and i kept hearing about aids vaccine age vaccine. oh, yeah, then the aids vaccine greg and i was like guys corrected if i'm wrong, but we don't have an a's vaccine, right? why do you keep talking to me about these aids vaccines and they're like no greg. we don't have a vaccine for aids, but we learned so much along the way and i i didn't realize that as an outsider somebody not from the world of science. i kind of thought okay, they fail they tried i knew a little bit of the history and i tried to develop vaccines for aids for age to protect against age. but we don't we're still waiting on one and that's not the way to look at it yet. there's no failure in science. they learned so much along the way so um, you'll you'll read in the book about how merck and others developed in approach using a virus to as part of a vaccine. to send a message to the body and that's all to to create a protein and let me take a step back because not everyone is fully familiar with vaccines are even are all vaccines are as an education for the bodies for the body's immune system. we're teaching the body and in this case, we're teaching the body to to recognize a protein. so when i talk about how mrna sends a message it's messenger rna. we're sending the body a message to create a protein and we all know we can all guess what that protein is right the spike protein. so that's the hallmark characteristic of this coronavirus. it's also frankly the with hiv. also there's a spike protein that many have worked on in terms of vaccines. so the whole idea is to tell the body to create a protein the spike protein and then it immune system recognizes that hey that that spike protein is foreign. it's it looks dangerous. and it's educated to fight it. that's why when we take the vaccines. sometimes we have a reaction because the but the body's immune system is set off. it's instructed to kind of target and that's the same exact thing. so then and why do we do that? because then when we if we ever experience the virus for in the genuine virus for real then we know the body's immune system has been taught to protect and to target into into fight off and fend off this new this new virus. so all we're doing with mrna vaccines is sending a message to the body a very short live message. remember mrna is very short lived to create a spike protein the bodies immune system is educated and we're off to the races and we're protected and that similar to what the we did with aids and we just did it in different ways with a virus bringing bringing a genetic message and the j&j the johnson and john's in vaccine and the oxford astra zenic of vaccines. they both use a different approach. called an adenovirus approach and as opposed to the mrna approach and believe it or not those approaches were developed for aids and again going back to that theme that as the scientists were telling me greg we learned so much in our efforts to combat aids. we learned how to conduct big trials. we learned about the bodies immune system, but we also developed this approach using this thing called adenovirus using a virus to send a genetic message to create in this case that this bike protein and that eventually got us to the johnson johnson and the and the astrazeneca oxford vaccines. so it all started back in hiv and also an unlikely process in a lot of ways which is why i focus on and write about it in my book, so before i get to just a few last observations in lessons from the experience from the this era. i want to underscore the theme of appreciation and how it is in many ways an unlikely miracle that we have these vaccines as quick as quick as we do now. one thing we have to obviously appreciate is that there was years of work that went into these vaccines and these approaches and they weren't done quickly as some people suspect and some people accuse the vaccine companies of and that's what my book is about the years of work that went into it, but it's also the case that it was done very quickly within in in 2020 as well. and when i talk about appreciation, let me put it to you this way in may of 2020 medina was running out of money in couldn't find it anywhere. they had a vaccine that they were convinced was gonna work was effective and could protect and they didn't have money to manufacture it and they went to the gates foundation. they went to murk they went to the us government. they couldn't get the financing and the people within moderno were so frustrated because they thought they could save lives and they thought they could change history. um, and they had stepped up they went out and yet they didn't. money and it was running out and they were in some trouble and there's a gentleman named juan andreas. i write about and he's ahead of manufacturing at madura really interesting character. he's not a scientist himself, but has been in the world of science and early on we're talking january or so of 2020. he became very worried about this virus and he told his family he lives outside of boston. he said to his family. we've got a prepare. he bought rolls of toilet paper. he bought paper towels. he bought a third refrigerator and stocked it up and his wife and his kids his daughter thought he was crazy. um, they were rolling their eyes. they were come on really a third refrigerator one really, but um, i think it was a month or two months later his mother-in-law died of covid and just like the rest of us his family realized how dangerous this virus was and one andrews wanted to be the one to step up and build these vaccines but again by may of 2020 modern was running out of money and in the end they turned to wall street. and they sold 1.3 billion dollars of shares that month and stefan mansell the ceo of madura took that check gave it to juan andreas and said go go spend spend spend build these vaccines and you know, we are quick to dismiss big pharma little pharma medium pharma. we're quick to criticize wall street, and there's reason to be critical about those industries. i'm a wall street journal we often are critical and i've written critical stories myself, but we also have to be appreciative when they do step up and if it were not for these investors buying up all the shares of moderna, then we wouldn't have the vaccine as quick as we did. it would've been months later. so that's one reason for appreciation, but it's also that the case with the fiser beyond tech vaccine uber. saheim remember that that ceo i told you about of beyond tech who got convinced that this virus is gonna be dangerous and that his company could build a vaccine they did a bill vaccine and then but they needed help and they reached out to fire and it was a senior scientist and phil dorman, sir. that uber reached out to and said hey, let's work together. that's what we're said to him. let's build a vaccine and phil dormancer said no, i don't want us taking our eye off the ball. we're building a flu vaccine together. i'm not sure. this virus is really gonna last. i'm not sure how dangerous it is. luckily uber. sahaina turned to a different signed senior scientist catherine jansen at at pfizer and convinced her that they should work together. but once again, it could have gone very different direction. so, um one more reason to be appreciative of how quick these vaccines we're developed and how effective they are and had this virus emerged 2017 2016. we might still be waiting for a vaccine so though that's an overview of my book a shot to save the world. i'm just going to end with just a couple thoughts about this era and about these achievements one is that it's striking how the ceos of these companies have told me and it told others that were it not for american investors american backing american scientists creativity of these researchers. these vaccines probably wouldn't be possible the i'm a capitalist. i'm a big believer that capitalism is the worst system if other than every other one, so the reason default capitalism, but it is the reason why we have these vaccines because only in america, do we have investors who are willing to write checks billions of dollars of checks. we'll talk about venture capital investors. we're talking about mom and pops like you and i on the hopes that down the road some day. they'll might be a payoff and that's for years. madrona was raising billions of dollars beyond tech was they went public both those companies no earnings anywhere in sight and it's something very unique. this country. it's also true that a lot of the innovation behind these vaccines. came from american laboratories on the creativity is something we have to appreciate. but there's a there's a flip side. i'll decide of that coin is i don't think it's shocking as much as although it is distressing how many people in this country just like the researchers who ignored the experts when it came to mrna and said, yeah the conventional wisdom says don't waste your time, but i'm gonna focus on it anyway and find a solution. we have a lot of those characters in our country saying i'm gonna ignore my doctor or i'm an ignore experts and i'm going to instead rely on a youtube video that my brother-in-law sent me and he said something about the vaccines and being dangerous and harmful and i don't need i've got some drug that no one's tested and i'm gonna take that instead. so the other side of that that individualism, i think that we should be very proud of in this country and has resulted in all kinds of achievement and accomplishment in all kinds of different fields including in the world of biotech. the flip side is the self-confidence and maybe self-delusion to ignore the experts and rely on ones own research when it comes to and you know, facebook and and youtube videos and and such and that's very distressing and and discouraging for so many like myself. who talks to these researchers who were behind a vaccines and can you imagine you're working at one of these companies and you've gone all out the last two years to try to help people and yes sure. do they want to get rich and famous definitely, but they also want to help and save lives. so for them to go go all out and not only to 30% or so of our of our neighbors not want to roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated, but they're pointing the fingers at these researchers and they're accusing them of certain things of hurting people and it's um, it's heartbreaking for something that people that i've talked to they they're exhausted. they're drains. they're emotionally damaged and from the effort and yet they're subject to accusations the modern of people had to take down the sign in front of their manufacturing lab facility nor in massachusetts partly because there were so many kind of crazy people coming to the campus and accusing them of certain things. all the people just came because they want the first vaccines. so there's another reason they they took the name off. so, um, i i am and i want to end a little more positive note again. i've been very reassured. and impressed by these scientists and these researchers and there's so many of them who've now shifted and i want to kind of end at a more positive note. they've shifted back to their original passions dan boruk up and in boston and the guy behind the j&j vaccine he wants to develop an aids vaccine auslim tricky and her husband uber sign and beyond tech they're focused on cancer and other things as well. madonna is trying to get a vaccine for rsv and cmv and other kind of viruses. so i'm encouraged and i'm hopeful about the future and the fact that these innovative creative resilient scientists are focusing on the next challenge and that's next pathogen. the next disease to me is uplifting and and and i'd like to end on that more hopeful note. so i'm going to stop now and take any questions at all. people have questions about the book or anything else related to the pandemic or anything else. we have a question right over here. thanks again. that was a wonderful presentation. you didn't spoke up speak a lot about the government and the fda approval process. and i remember reading some articles talking about how the fastest fda approval process i believe was measles or mumps and it was like four years. and how this of course was in less than a year that it came out. what's the implication for the fda approval process as a result that it seems like, you know, superficially it was very inefficient. and cumbersome and perhaps bureaucratic overly, so when you look at how this this these vaccines are created in such a short period of time. do you have any thoughts on that? sure, and i'll roll that question into one that i think earlier. someone asked me and i'd be glad to answer if there's an interest some people want to know about operation warp speed and whether it was helpful or not, raise your hand if that's something you want me to talk about as well. yeah people often want to know about that. so in terms of the process, i do want to make it clear that nothing was rushed and often people have that that concern in terms of testing in terms of the trials that's reassuring, but you are right that things were done quicker than in the past and the people i've talked to believe that perhaps we're in a new era where we're again. we don't want to suggest that things can be done cutting corners and accelerated but the bureaucracy that you suggest is an issue and i mixed feelings about that because i i've also talked to some people recently who are worried that not enough has changed and the reaction they're getting about now. they're trying to build a pan coronavirus vaccine a lot of people which would be wonderful for us. so you go into it and i think we're gonna get there, but it'll take a few years where you go into your doctor's office and you get a vaccine for all the coronaviruses the earlier ones this one and it protects you from future ones, but also maybe that role in to one with with flu, so you have a flu vaccine rolled into one nova facts and some other people working on that drew weisman, one of the people i mentioned earlier when the architects that mrna early research on critical research groundbreaking research is working on a pan coronavirus one, so there has been some improvement in terms of that process that is encouraging then i'm going to just talk a second about operation warp speed so it's my belief and maybe you can you can sense this. i'm a kind of a moderate we at the wall street journal on the new side are sort of straight down the middle and and that's in keeping is the reason i stay there so long i believe in that approach. i believe that operation warps speed the those on the left. don't give it enough credit and those on the right give it too much credit. so those who are not familiar operational speed was the effort by the trump administration to do two things to finance to write big checks to various vaccine companies and to help them in terms of resources, and i'll talk about that in a second and it was a really successful effort in that they picked six vaccine approaches. i'm sorry three vaccine approaches two vaccine companies within each so six vaccines total and five out of the six have been proven successful so far even the sixth. i think we're probably we're gonna event sin, and those were moderna and the pfizer one when it comes to mrna the johnson johnson and astrazeneca oxford won the adenovirus and as a protein subunit one, that's nova vaccine gsk and santa fe. so you got to give them a lot of credit the money accelerated the process. so again those on the left don't give it enough credit and not only that the it wasn't just the money. so there's a general a former general now named general perna gus perna, who was the head of logistics for the army. just making sure everyone was fed. it's kind of thing where you only notice these kinds of people these kind of issues when when something goes wrong, but it's very important work and he shifted to work on operation warp speed and he provided crucial important work help to companies things like getting bridges closed so that moderna could ship something and our little parts that they needed from different parts of the country if you remember the summer of 2020. was difficult shipping and transportation and such and that kind of stuff from operation warp speed was really important. so on the one hand it should get more credit than people on the left give it to give it on the other hand. those on the right that give it all the credit. well fiser didn't take money for developing its vaccine. they already developing it on its own. they didn't want to take money from the government they take they did take money from the government later and money's fungible so you don't want to go overboard there, but if you're in the first company that operation warps, we wrote a big check to was oxford astrazeneca, and that didn't even help us in the united states. it's helped other helped elsewhere and majority. remember when i said moderna went to the government and made 2020 and couldn't get any money so i don't want to give too much credit but operation warp speed what was helpful. i think i think we have one over here, greg. that's obviously that the mri and a approach was very successful. however, they were other in the american efforts in disrespect were overwhelming but we know also about some efforts made in russia the so-called sputnik and the chinese vaccine. so my question is, can you tell us anything about this and since you are wall street person? can you explain why? the the moderna stark increase by an order of magnitude based on the success of the vaccine whereas pfizer which is the same approach the stock increase only 50% of the is there any justification for this dichotomy? sure, so i'll address the question of the russian sputnik vaccine, but also let me make it a little broader the chinese have their own vaccine approaches and i could talk about them. listen both sputnik and the chinese vaccines. were they the only ones available in the world? we'd all be rolling upper sleeves or maybe not all of us, but i would be okay. oh really my sleeves and being vaccinated that said, um, i i they're not nearly as effective. so this sputnik one. i don't get too dealed details into it, but it's a combination of it's the j&j and i and oxford approach using an adenovirus. it's usually it's using a virus she transport the genetic message to the body to create this spike protein. it uses that something called add five add five was used by merck to fight to develop their aids vaccine and it didn't work. it's not to say that it's not aids and hiv and coronavirus are very different. so, but it's not a great approach, but they mix it with ad5 with another one for the second shot. so it's not a terrible one, but it's not the most transparent. their their data is isn't as good for a long time putin wouldn't get vaccinated so that may tell you something so it seems like it's a good one, but not a great one a similarly. the chinese vaccines are okay. they're not bad. there's not as good and there's a reason why i i know and off my book with uber sign being wooed and talked talking to chinese officials because they'd like that vaccine there and hong kong today has both the fiser vaccine as well as a sign of act the chinese one. so there's a good vaccines. not as good and in terms of stock price madonna is a vaccine company and all it's earnings come from their covid-19 vaccine. whereas we all know pfizer is a big company so their earnings get watered down but not just that they've got a split their earnings with beyond tech beyond tech is the german company orca science company. so beyond take itself has has sorted and done nicely, but it's just not a pure play as they call on wall street pfizer isn't but yeah fiser has gone up just not not as much. and just a wonderful talk. oh, thank you. why does the body's immune system kind of lose its memory over time? i guess and the and the protection phase. excuse me. um, yes, it does have to be reminded at times the education. it's a good i'm not sure. they are is it's not unprecedented. there are other vaccines where you have to get a booster not every kind of six months or so what i find kind of fascinating. is that for all the criticisms of these vaccines and i'm not some raw raw vaccine person necessarily. i'm impressed by them and thankful for them. but they're you know, they're not perfect. but the crazy thing for me is that we haven't adjusted them yet for aamicom for a ba2 for any of the variants and yet they're pretty darn effective so they could be more effective if we need be we could adjust them to target these variants. we're still using the existing original vaccines. so sometimes the body has to be reminded and you know partly it's because of these variants. so if we didn't have a variant, i'm not sure or variance as challenging. i mean, i'm gonna call frankly. i talked to some of these researchers when i'm a come first emerged and they were nervous. they were worried that they might have to really change rejigger this vaccine make it target specifically omicron so part there are a little bit concern and frankly part of it is we're just a little bit i won't say conservative, which we're trying to be careful. so there are number scientists who say maybe we don't need necessarily be rushing to get boosted. they're a lot of people that say we don't need the fourth booster unless you're immune a compromise and such you've got some long long lived protection as well t cell protection. so there's reason for more returns and maybe there are some people that didn't even think we needed the the booster. so there's a debate that goes on, but thank thankfully these vaccines have relatively little risk, i don't want to say there's no risk. i don't want to exaggerate things. there is a risk with these vaccines when i drive home tonight. i'm taking risk. we're all going to unfortunately take risk when we get in our cars, but it's um minimal um thankfully so yeah. helps answer you have a question question in front there? yeah, i got it. here. oh, okay. you're saying there are some risks. what are the the risks? i mean, um, listen, there's some people that have had some rare reactions. they are rare they are exaggerated by those. vaccine hasn't people so i don't want to. i'm not here to start concerned or worry, but yeah, they're minimal they're rare but with ever listen you take it any kind of drug or you go into surgery. it's a weird thing to me. i mean you step out of nail you get a tetanus shot. does anybody ask the history and and skepticism today go on youtube to to find out the the brother-in-law said about about on facebook about the tetanus shot. no, but something about these vaccines has caused. i think it's where we are as a people as a nation. everything is politicized. it's sad for me. it's scary for me. i don't see much of a change in the short term, unfortunately. so people have exaggerated the risks. but yeah there didn't rare very rare reactions much like other rare reactions to drugs and vaccines. hello. thank you so much for your talk show. your book is very fascinating. i something about your concluding thoughts kind of caught me off guard a little bit the part where you said people are ignoring the research and researchers and should be appreciating, you know their efforts to try and bring vaccine information to the public and i totally agree with that. but i'm a health science librarian and i've been assisting people to find information on the vaccine since for the last two years a lot of the people that approach me that are vaccine hesitant are very well educated and they provide their own research to counteract what i tell them. um and a lot of them a lot of the anti-vacci movement comes from people within the research world, i mean dr. andrew wakefield, you know, he was this the guy that started the ants the autism is caused by vaccine movement. the pandemic movie that came out last year that said that the whole vaccine is a conspiracy, you know created to create. microchips in our brains like that was there they featured a doctor dr. judy muckovitz there. so there are there is a reason why there's hesitancy because there are people with doctors who are claiming to be experts who are promoting it as well. so i was just wondering in any of the interviews that you conducted. did you encounter any doctors or scientists or researchers that had that kind of perspective on the vaccines and also as a reporter as well, do you think that there is a an ethical obligation for them to put aside their bias for the interest of public health and good. it's a great question. first of all, thank you for your your own work your day-to-day efforts to educate people and thank you for those healthcare members of the healthcare worlds who are here tonight for your works for your work. so let me answer that in a few different ways. the first is had i not done all this research. i might be hesitant about the vaccines as well and often when i speak to audiences. there's a segment a group in the audience. that is reasonably concerned or concerned for reasonable reasons. they'll say something like well. greg didn't i read in your book that the average vaccine takes 10 years to develop and and the fastest one ever until covid was four years and you're telling me greg that for in 330 days and that's what it took 30 days from the time the sequence was revealed until authorization of the first vaccine. that's all it took. why why shouldn't i be nervous and i again i probably would be concerned as well and this isn't a direct answer. i'll get to your your question in a second, but maybe it is helpful for people as well the way i answered those kinds of people. maybe you all have in your lives those types of people who are reasonably concerned not the people that think we you know, we have chips in our brain that kind of thing and bill gates and george soros and you know, i don't know who else has conspired to to hurt us all but reasonable people the reason why we were able to do it so quickly and 330 days. it is a of course all that work that i talk about over the years. so what there was years and years i worked at led into this vaccines, but also for the first time ever we developed tested to trials and manufactured vaccines simultaneously. and for good reason so think about it. what why would you manufacture a vaccine it costs billions and millions of dollars. why would you manufacture vaccine before it was approved? we've never done that in history and yet we did it last year and why we do it last year because we made a lot of money sloshing around and available for these companies like moderna. so if they have the money, yeah the build these vaccines all the manufactured them before they've been approved. but until this last year we never had that so they took the chance they did those different phases those stages simultaneously and that is the real explanation for why we did it in three engine 30 days to address your question. so it striking how many scientists researchers doctors are behind some of the skepticism so i would answer that two ways. you've got some who aren't really experts in this field and you have to be very careful you read. op-eds all the time and frankly, you know close to home. we've published them super smart established credentialed acclaimed even a scientists doctors researchers who are just not infectious disease experts. they're not virologists. they're not they don't know much about the vaccine process there. they they've got a certain perspective, but they're not their expertise is this area and doctors are very confident people and they like to share opinions. so those people i find that very dangerous when you're not necessarily an expert. i mean, i'm no expert i'd talk to the people who work on these areas who are established and they're not foolproof, but these are the leading voices. so you've got someone though people that you have to be careful of who are behind these some of these efforts and frankly some of these people are also behind we can talk about the origins issue that they aren't issue. a controversial one if you want me to talk about that, but then you do have some people who are hesitant and you say did it or raise questions and i have to talk to some part of my research. i mean luigi warren's a fascinating guy. he played an important role in development mrna and he before i think he was kicked off twitter. he's raised a lot of questions about these vaccines and you know, these are type a brilliant quirky. my book is about really unusual characters and it takes sort of these unusual personalities to develop this these vaccines and to change the world and and yes, it's there are some who have raised questions and that's okay. you can have a minority who raised questions, but the majority have been reassuring it and the proof is in the pudding. i mean my gosh these vaccines it's over a year at this point. there were a lot of people early on who i trusted who kind of said greg for the first year so you never 100% or about vaccines you want you want to wait, but it's been a while and there are a lot of billions of people have had it and and i don't believe the government. i'm not some conspiracy. there is where the government's hiding the information and there's a there's a famous guy on robert malone who's been very controversial and he was on joe rogan. he's the reason why that interview was the reason why joe rogan got so much criticism and such and there's a really great podcast called science versus or science v. i forget where they went through all of malone's criticisms and and they refuted each of them and they showed how he was exaggerating now why he exaggerates? i'm not sure but he's incredible doctor and we have to give him a lot of thanks for some early work on mrna he worked with that individual and mentioned earlier john wolf, but sometimes people share their opinions and and we don't have to necessarily subscribe to them. we have time for one last question and then we'll do signing in the theater in the lobby. you're so passionate about each and every book. are you working on a new book now? i mean are you just this is? obviously knew right right, so as you kind of suggest if i'm going to spend a couple years on a book throw myself into it. it's difficult process as i'm sure many people know maybe people written books in this in this room on average. i went to bed at 3. am i was taking a shower at 2:30. am i can remember and getting up relatively early and starting all over again. i did three all nighters. i remember i had even do those in college where i just kind of worked the hallway through part of it because was real time and part of it because it's difficult stuff trying to understand it all and have to explain it to the masses. so the point being i've got to really be passionate about the topics. so i'm just thankful that i've had opportunity over the last few years find some things that i'm excited about, but it's not easy to find good topics where they're interesting personalities or characters or in important topics at least to me and those that know much about i throw myself to stuff it partly selfishly to learn and understand so i don't have anything right now that i'm as passionate about and it's kind of a high bar. so i'm if you have a good idea let me hear. thank you. thank you for everyone's attention. today's today's event is a part of the presidential speaker series which features world-renowned individuals as a mean of as a means of generating discussion and providing an opportunity for our community to learn from distinguished professionals with unique perspectives talents and stories. previous presidential speaker series events have featured supreme court justice sonia sotomayor

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