THE HASTE WAS THE KNOWN RISK: 8/8 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
⏱️ 5 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 CAMP FUNSTON
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is a |
| 0:05.0 | CBS I in the world. I'm John Bachelor with Gregory Zuckerman, the Wall Street |
| 0:08.7 | Journal reporter whose new book is A Shot to Save the World, |
| 0:12.2 | the Inside Story of the Life or Death |
| 0:13.9 | Race for COVID-19 vaccine. The questions to be answered include the |
| 0:20.6 | original question about the origins of COVID-19. |
| 0:25.0 | Gregory's book examines all possibilities and there's no resolution here |
| 0:29.6 | but because he's done all of this reporting, I ask him, |
| 0:33.0 | is it important to these heroes, the men and women of these companies |
| 0:38.6 | who produce the vaccine? |
| 0:40.4 | Is the origin important to them, Gregory, or have they gotten something else out of this that is useful for the future, which is the methodology? I can't tell. |
| 0:50.0 | Yeah, they don't really focus on the origins. |
| 0:53.7 | They believe that it was likely naturally a spillover from an animal. |
| 0:58.6 | We'll eventually find the animal hosts. |
| 1:01.1 | But quite honestly, these are researchers who are just focused on trying to develop |
| 1:04.6 | vaccines that are protective and they're more focused on using their methods to fight new |
| 1:10.9 | diseases and illnesses, really int intractable difficult ones, things like cancer, things like malaria, things like HIV still, |
| 1:17.6 | Dan Baruch, RSV, but various viruses, and I'm very optimistic, I don't want to say confident, |
| 1:23.7 | optimistic about the future, but in terms of the origins, they believe the mainstream |
| 1:27.8 | view in science remains that it was likely from an animal that spilled over. |
| 1:31.9 | There's a possibility that leaked out of a lab in China. |
| 1:35.4 | I personally am in an Occam's Razor kind of guy, so I'm of the belief that it likely we will eventually find |
... |
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.