THE HASTE WAS THE KNOWN RISK: 7/8 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
⏱️ 16 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.
1919 TOKYO
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is a |
| 0:04.5 | This is CBS I in the world. I'm John Batcher with Gregory Zuckerman. |
| 0:09.0 | A shot to save the world is his new book, The Inside Story of the life or death race for COVID |
| 0:14.2 | 19 vaccine. The competitors. One to go, Novavax, the little company that |
| 0:21.9 | couldn't. |
| 0:22.8 | Novavax is following Gail Smith's genius with the insects |
| 0:27.2 | and Novavax is the laggard. |
| 0:30.0 | Novavax is not going to catch up, but the advantage here is that Novavax is also a vaccine that can be easily transported and can be used worldwide. |
| 0:42.0 | So I wanted to cite that that not everything goes to the if it's |
| 0:46.5 | the rabbit in the hair Gregory is often to it's good to be slow |
| 0:50.9 | footed here because you have opportunities that are going to develop over many years. |
| 0:56.5 | We don't know where Novavax is gone. |
| 0:58.7 | But they were down what they had 30, they had 30 or 40 cents in the till when they finally broke through. |
| 1:05.0 | Is that how low? |
| 1:06.0 | How how little money did they have at the end, Gregory? |
| 1:09.8 | Yeah, I love the novax story, frankly. so here's this company that spent years failing |
| 1:16.1 | they tried to make vaccines for pretty much everything HIV, SARS, swine flu, |
| 1:20.9 | Ebola, Merz, you name it. |
| 1:22.9 | They tried to create a vaccine and they couldn't. |
| 1:25.3 | This guy, Gail Smith, is the head scientist there. |
| 1:27.6 | And yet they still believe to their approach, |
| 1:29.1 | creating a protein in the labs, |
... |
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.