Brendan Borrell: ...about the rivalries & science behind the race for the COVID-19 vaccine

Nobody Told Me!

Business, Entrepreneurship

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2021

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Join us as we get a behind-the-scenes look at the politics, greed, ego and science involved in the race for a COVID vaccine.

With us on this episode is award-winning journalist Brendan Borrell, who’s written for The New York Times, The Atlantic and Bloomberg Businessweek, among others. He’s the author of a riveting new book called, "The First Shots: The Epic Rivalries and Heroic Science Behind the Race to the Coronavirus Vaccine".

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Nobody Told Me.
0:13.2	I'm Laura Owens, and I'm Jan Black.
0:15.6	On this episode, we'll get a behind-the-scenes look at the politics, greed, ego, and
0:20.4	science involved in the race for a COVID vaccine.
0:23.2	Joining us is award-winning journalist Brendan Borrell, who's written for the New York Times,
0:28.1	The Atlantic and Bloomberg Business Week, among others. He's the author of a riveting new book called
0:33.8	The First Shots, The Epic Rivalries and Heroic Science behind the Race to the Coronavirus
0:40.4	Vaccine. Brendan, we thank you so much for joining us. It's great to be here. Your book is billed as
0:47.2	the inside story of Operation Warp Speed and the race to end the pandemic. That is an overwhelming topic to tackle. What led you to
0:57.2	writing it? I mean, this was this was the story of my career, I think, as somebody who covers
1:04.2	science a lot, as a freelance writer. I also have a PhD in biology, bees of all things, so it had nothing to do with the vaccines.
1:13.5	But in the beginning of the pandemic, January, February of 2020, I was trying to figure out how do I put my knowledge and experience to good use.
1:24.6	You know, everybody wanted to figure out how can they contribute their certain set of
1:28.8	skills. And I started talking to some of my sources about what sort of the next phase was in this
1:38.1	crazy, confusing coronavirus crisis. And this was kind of when the vaccine was starting to be on people's radar.
1:46.0	And so I said, you know what? I want to write a book about the vaccine race. When you were talking to
1:51.8	people from the pharmaceutical companies and people who weren't involved in the making of the vaccine,
1:56.9	did you get a vibe from them that they were confident they were going to come up with something great?
2:01.2	Or was their concern that maybe they wouldn't?
2:04.1	There was absolutely a great deal of skepticism, not that they, you know, about the speed of this process, right?
2:11.2	I mean, historically, the fastest we ever developed a vaccine was four years for the mumps vaccine.
2:16.8	That was in the 60s. And typically,
	...

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