Our 15,000 family members, friends and neighbors fell victim to the coronavirus last week. We can almost hear the national sigh of relief when the pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, started delivering the first dose of its vaccine across the country. Pfizer and its German partner, Bioentech, were the only major vaccine developers to repeatedly deny federal funding for research and development, despite frequent announcements of the broadcast, although they were the first to receive emergency use authorization from the FDA. Biotech company, Moderna was also approved on Friday. Under the pace of Operation Operation, the federal government has set a target of 20 million inoculations by the end of the year. But that goal can be ambitious; The rollout of the vaccine has been rock solid. Still, for the first time since the epidemic hit, there seems to be an end to sight, thanks to revolutionary advances in biotechnology.
Bill Whitaker: This is a worldwide epidemic, the worst in a century. The vaccine has not been marketed before. It’s a big bet that you’ve made this work.
Katherine Jensen: Yeah, I didn’t see that much – maybe as a condition because we’re scientists. We do the same thing every day for a living life. We are looking for new things. Everything is new.
Katherine Jensen is head of vaccine research and development for Pfizer. Based in New York, it is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Jensen, who was interested in science as a child in Germany, grew up developing a vaccine against pneumonia and the HPV virus. So, when he first heard about the novel coronavirus, his thoughts immediately turned to a vaccine.
Bill Whitaker: When you were starting this mission, the virus caught fire in New York.
Kathrin Jensen: Yes. We lived in the hot zone of New York. And we saw what was happening every day – every day. The most chilling thing for me when we walked our dog was Bill. And you will see a refrigerated truck, while another was seen in the parking lot in front of the hospital.
Bill Whitaker: Refrigerator Truck Morgues?
Catherine Jensen: Mortgage, true. It fully stimulated the desire to be vaccinated, no matter what it took.
Bill Whitaker: Was this kind of personal?
Katherine Jensen: I took this very personally. I wanted to fight it, defeat it, fight it. That was it – nothing else matters.
Around the Atlantic, in Mainz, German doctors Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Turesi were also focusing on fighting coronavirus. The founder of a cutting-edge biotechnology company called Binotech was collaborating with Pfizer on the flu vaccine when Sahin read an article on January 24 about a mysterious disease in Wuhan, China.
Dr .. Ur Gur Sahin: We knew we were about to start a global epidemic. And we know we don’t have to waste time.
Dr. Ozlem Turesi: We basically started thinking about a vaccine development program from the beginning – how to implement it – and so we had to make the whole company the core.
Bill Whitaker: Do you have any doubts about doing that?
Dr. Ugur Sahin: I had no doubt. The only thing that worries me is that we will probably be too late.
The married couple’s company, Bioentech, is leading the way in vaccines made with mRNA – the molecules of our cells, which pass genetic instructions into particles through our DNA that make proteins, inhibiting the formation of life.
Dr. Ugur Sahin: We felt the responsibility to start developing the vaccine, because we knew the power of our technology.
Manipulating mRNA molecules to fight disease has been considered a promising technique for over 30 years, but it has never produced a proven vaccine. With the coronavirus spreading in Europe, Sahin and Turesi redoubled their efforts. By February, Bioentech had produced 20 different versions of mRNA that triggered an immune response in mice and monkeys. Sahin knew his small company would need help moving beyond the lab for his research, so he picked up the phone and called his friend at Pfizer, Catherine Jensen.
Dr .. Ugur Sahin: And he said, “Ugur, why are you calling me?” And I said, “Catherine, we started making vaccines against COVID-19. I wanted to ask you, do you think Pfizer will join us?” And he said, “Of course, Ugur, I really wanted to call you, because we are also interested in developing a vaccine, and that will be our most important project.”
It became more like a passion for Pfizer CEO, Albert Borla …
Albert Borla: If what I was thinking was – if – not ours, then who? We have a lot of vaccine experience. We have a lot of production capacity with vaccines. I went and I said, “We need to do something to see if we can help develop a medical solution.”
Since March it has been pressuring Pfizer scientists to quickly develop a vaccine. He set an October deadline.
Albert Borla: So – of course, I also gave them some tools in their hands. I told them they should think, this is not business as usual. No consideration is given to the return on investments. This is supposed to be exactly what W – to keep an open checkbook.
Bill Whitaker: An open checkbook.
Albert Borla: Yes.
Bill Whitaker: Do you know how much you’re willing to spend?
Albert Borla: It will cost about 2 2 billion. And I knew that if we failed, and had to write it down, it would be very painful. But it won’t take Pfizer down.
Catherine Jensen assured her boss, Albert Borla, that MRNA technology has the best chance of meeting its tight deadlines. Through her work with Bioentech on the flu vaccine, she became convinced that mRNA was a success. So Pfizer CEO Baurla signed on to the partnership, and turned the dice on the experimental technique.
Bill Whitaker: There was a great chance you didn’t succeed.
Albert Borla: I believe in the power of science. I believe in the power of the private sector. And I believe in the miracles that science can do for mankind in the private sector.
Unlike older school vaccines made from real viruses grown slowly in eggs, these mRNA molecules are quickly produced in the laboratory, programmed with little genetic code of the virus. We’ve seen pictures of her coronavirus with her crown of spike proteins. The mRNA vaccine instructs your healthy cells to replicate spikes. They can’t make you sick, but they teach the immune system what the virus looks like. If a real virus appears, your immune system’s antibodies will attack.
By May, Pfizer U.S. Was ready to begin vaccine testing at various sites
Dr .. Mark Mulligan: And I raised my hand and said yes.
They tapped Dr .. Mark Mulligan, Director of the NYU-Langone Vaccine Center in Manhattan.
Dr. Mark Mulligan: I have worked on HIV / AIDS vaccines, Zika, Ebola – flu vaccines. So this is really the moment we jump in and say, “Well, let’s do that. Let’s try to be part of the compromise.”
Approximately 44,000 people worldwide volunteered for a phased, double-blind trial, tested for a placebo vaccine – most were between 16 and 85 years old. When researchers arrived for African American and Hispanic volunteers, they encountered some doubts.
Bill Whittaker: Were these communities well represented in the test?
Dr. Mark. Mark Mulligan: I think they were. If you add the Hispanic population and the African American black population and the Indigenous American population, it only comes down to 40%. We would especially like to have done a little better with African Americans. We were just below 10%. But I think overall, it’s good and we have a lot of town halls with community partners in Harlem. It’s important for us to be able to say, “Yes. We tested it in your community. Yes, it was just as tolerant, safe and equally defensive.
Phased trials are usually conducted sequentially. To speed up the process, the FDA allowed these tests to run simultaneously. Dr .. Mulligan told us that he had never seen so much so fast.
Bill Whittaker: What would you say to people who are worried that it was too fast to be taken to market?
Dr. Mark. Mark Mulligan: Given the public health crisis at a given international level, it was appropriate to use all the momentum. I have been vaccinating trials for 30 years, and I promise that no corners have been cut on the general safety assessment.
Blood samples from the volunteers were brought to the Pfizer facility in Pearl River, New York, where the robots walked day and night to analyze the effectiveness of the vaccine. They will continue to collect and analyze samples for two years.
Kathrin Jensen: These robots have handled over 180,000 tests.
Katherine Jensen was taking a break from the country with her husband last month when the final results of the third phase were announced. She got a call from Pfizer CEO, Albert Borla.
Catherine Jensen: And I said, “What is Albert?” “Well, Catherine, we talked to the FDA, we can say the vaccine is more than 90% effective,” he said. And I said, “What? (Laughter) It’s amazing.” So my husband and I, he was standing next to me, we – we were jumping up and down.
Dr. Mark. Mark Mulligan: To have a vaccine that was very necessary, and to be %%% protective, and it happens so quickly is unparalleled in my experience.
Bill Whitaker: Can we all say goodbye to our masks?
Dr .. Mark Mulligan: I’m not afraid. We are not sure if these vaccines will prevent asymptomatic infections. This vaccine probably won’t make a difference to this current growth that we are.
Bill Whitaker: We’ll go into this for a moment.
Dr. Mark. Mark Mulligan: Absolutely. This light switch is not like on / off, but it is like obscure switches that we turn on slowly to bring the light. 5%, 10%, 20% to 50% of people are vaccinated every month. But to end the epidemic in 2021, we probably need to vaccinate 75% of the people and then we can stop the epidemic.
There are still many unknowns about this vaccine: how long it lasts; Are there long-term safety issues, as few people have severe allergic reactions? It still needs to be investigated on young children and pregnant women. But the most important point: a bumpy rollout. Vaccine development was rapid, but so far, the distribution has been nothing. Pfizer reduced the estimated number of doses for 2020 by more than 50%, citing a shortage of raw materials. States are complaining that they are not getting clear guidance on what they are getting from the federal government’s war operations and when. At the moment, the light at the end of the tunnel is still dim.
This past week, when the death toll from the U.S. pandemic reached 1,000,000,000, he rang the bell lls0000 times in Washington D.C.’s National Cathedral – once for every thousand Americans killed by the virus.
Bill Whitaker: This vaccine is called a miracle. How would you describe it?
Katherine Jensen: We can call it a miracle. But one realizes that a miracle always happens. It just didn’t happen. Right? It was something that was done intentionally. It was done with passion, done with passion. It was urgent. It is always a deadly disease in your eyes.
Produced by Mark Lieberman. Associate Producer, Ali Rauf. Broadcast collaborator, Emilio Almonte. Edited by Sean Kelly.
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