Vaccine Wars | This is Not a Drill | 1

Business Wars

Wondery

History, Business, David Brown, Management

4.6 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2021

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s early January 2020, and a mysterious new virus is overtaking the city of Wuhan, China.

At first the outbreak barely makes the news, but as the threat comes into focus, scientists spring into action to make a vaccine. But the outlook’s grim – vaccines take years to create, test and approve. No one expects one to arrive anytime soon.

But for two ambitious biotech start-ups, this is a chance to show the world what their cutting-edge tech can do.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, prime members, you can listen to business wars at free on Amazon music. Download the app today
0:05.6	January 3rd, 2020 Shanghai, China 44 infections 11 seriously ill. A motorbike courier zooms down the road
0:33.6	towards the plain grey building of the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center. He folds up at the
0:40.4	entrance and races inside carrying a metal case covered in biohesser designs. I have an urgent
0:46.2	delivery for a professor Zhang Yang-jong, it's from Wuhan. Zhang is one of China's foremost
0:52.2	virologists and expert in decoding the genetics of previously unknown pathogens. A mysterious illness
0:59.6	is spreading in the city of Wuhan in central China and its Zhang's job to identify the culprit.
1:06.4	The case is rushed to a biosecure room in Zhang's lab. Inside the room, a technician in a
1:12.4	hazmat suit opens it and carefully lifts out a test tube. It's a sample of lung fluid from a 41-year-old
1:19.2	hospital patient in Wuhan. Zhang and his team work non-stop for the next 40 hours to isolate the virus
1:27.0	and piece together its genetic makeup. Finally, at 2am on January 5th, one of the team calls Zhang
1:34.8	over to his computer. On the screen are the letters A, C, G and U repeated over and over in various
1:44.4	combinations, the letters that spell out the virus's genetic code. Genome complete, Zhang calls the
1:52.5	head of respiratory medicine at Wuhan's central hospital. We have the genome. It's a previously
1:58.9	unknown coronavirus that's closely related to SARS. On the other end of the line, the hospital
2:04.5	doctor goes quiet. The 2003 SARS outbreak killed more than 800 people.
2:11.6	Is it more dangerous than SARS? We don't know yet, but it's certainly more dangerous than
2:16.7	influenza. You and your staff should take precautions, quarantine patients. How many cases are there?
2:24.1	59. The two men fall silent as the seriousness of this outbreak dawns on them.
2:31.9	In the two days, it's taken Zhang's team to decode the virus. The number of infections has
2:37.0	jumped 34%. If the virus keeps spreading at this rate, there will be almost 500 cases next week
2:45.8	and thousands more before the month is over. For years, scientists warned that a global pandemic
	...

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