THE HASTE WAS THE KNOWN RISK: 4/8 A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of the Life-or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine, by Gregory Zuckerman Kindle Edition
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Shot-Save-World-Life-Death/dp/059342039X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Few were ready when a mysterious respiratory illness emerged in Wuhan, China in January 2020. Politicians, government officials, business leaders, and public-health professionals were unprepared for the most devastating pandemic in a century. Many of the world’s biggest drug and vaccine makers were slow to react or couldn’t muster an effective response.
It was up to a small group of unlikely and untested scientists and executives to save civilization. A French businessman dismissed by many as a fabulist. A Turkish immigrant with little virus experience. A quirky Midwesterner obsessed with insect cells. A Boston scientist employing questionable techniques. A British scientist despised by his peers. Far from the limelight, each had spent years developing innovative vaccine approaches. Their work was met with skepticism and scorn. By 2020, these individuals had little proof of progress. Yet they and their colleagues wanted to be the ones to stop the virus holding the world hostage. They scrambled to turn their life’s work into life-saving vaccines in a matter of months, each gunning to make the big breakthrough—and to beat each other for the glory that a vaccine guaranteed.
1918 ST. LOUIS
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batscher. This is CBSi in the world and my conversation with Gregory Zuckermann |
| 0:10.7 | the Wall Street Journal Special Correspondent, but the author of A New Book, A Shot to Save the World, |
| 0:16.8 | The Inside Story of the Life or Death Race for COVID-19 Vaccine. |
| 0:21.3 | These are pursuits by Big pharma, big personalities simultaneously, not |
| 0:26.7 | knowing in their future in the beginning of 2020 will be a pandemic that is a global catastrophe that may or may not be solvable. |
| 0:37.7 | Right now we have a remedy what these men and women produce. |
| 0:42.1 | Novavax is one company that Gregory dubs at one point the little |
| 0:46.0 | company that couldn't. |
| 0:47.9 | But before we get to Novavax, we need to spend time with Gail Smith from North Dakota, a man who seems another genius who seems |
| 0:57.5 | self-taught but his methodology is based on insects, insect cells. |
| 1:03.5 | How so, Gregory. |
| 1:05.6 | Yeah, so Gail Smith's a fascinating guy, |
| 1:07.7 | as you said, from Littletown and North Dakota, |
| 1:10.6 | and he becomes convinced that insect cells and insect viruses can actually be really helpful. |
| 1:16.8 | You can create vaccines. |
| 1:19.2 | He realized, not many people did at a time, but insects and humans are much more alike than most people |
| 1:24.5 | presume. |
| 1:25.5 | They both require oxygen. |
| 1:27.3 | They both have some anatomical similarities. |
| 1:30.4 | They both have brains and hearts and reproductive organs and he thought that if you could use an insect a virus |
| 1:37.8 | Which are as they call they call them roomy in other words. There's room in there in the virus you take it and you place you can put genetic |
| 1:45.5 | message in the virus and you put it into an insect cell you could create proteins |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.