The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Messenger: Moderna, the Vaccine, and the Business Gamble That Changed the World by Peter Loftus

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

The Messenger: Moderna, the Vaccine, and the Business Gamble That Changed the World by Peter Loftus The inside story of an unprecedented feat of science and business. At the start of 2020, Moderna was a biotech unicorn with dim prospects. Yes, there was the promise of its disruptive innovation that could transform medicine by using something called messenger RNA, one of the body's building blocks of life, to combat disease. But its stock was under water. There were reports of a toxic work culture. And despite ten years of work, the company was still years away from delivering its first product. Investors were getting antsy, or worse, skeptical. Then the pandemic hit, and Moderna, at first reluctantly, became a central player in a global drama—a David to Big Pharma's Goliaths—turning its technology toward breaking the global grip of the terrible disease. By year's end, with the virus raging, Moderna delivered one of the world's first Covid-19 vaccines, with a stunningly high rate of protection. The achievement gave the world a way out of a crippling pandemic while validating Moderna's technology, transforming the company into a global industry power. Biotech, and the venture capital community that fuels it, will never be the same. Wall Street Journal reporter Peter Loftus, veteran reporter covering the pharmaceutical and biotech industries and part of a Pulitzer Prize–finalist team, brings the inside story of Moderna, from its humble start at a casual lunch through its heady startup days, into the heart of the pandemic and beyond. With deep access to all of the major players, Loftus weaves a tale of science and business that brings to life Moderna's monumental feat of creating a vaccine that beat back a deadly virus and changed the business of medicine forever. The Messenger spans a decade and is full of heroic efforts by ordinary people, lucky breaks, and life-and-death decisions. It's the story of a revolutionary idea, the evolution of a cutting-edge American industry, and one of the great achievements of this century.

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No, I think we just keep racking up those numbers. He's going to be talking to us about the Moderna vaccine and some of the different things with his new hottest book that just barely came out. Meantime, YouTube.com, Goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss, the big LinkedIn group, of course, and the LinkedIn newsletter. Of course, you want to subscribe to that. And Chris Voss Leadership Institute.com for speaking and whatever the hell else you want. If you want to talk to me, that's usually the best way to do it. That or, you know, just, I don't know, send me pictures on Snapchat. I don't know.

Don't do that. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. We really appreciate it. He's the author of the amazing new book that just came out July 26, 2022. Peter Loftus is in the show with us today. The Messenger, Moderna, the Vaccine, and the Business Scamble that Changed the World. He's going to be talking to us about his book. He writes about the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare for the Wall Street Journal based in Philadelphia. He covers large drug makers,

biotech firms, and the latest developments in drug research and innovation. He's followed Moderna and the wider chase for a COVID-19 vaccine from the start. He is part of the journal's reporting team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Welcome to the show, Peter. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? You're doing well. Awesome, man. Well, congratulations on the new book. And tell us, at dot coms, where people can go on the interwebs to find and learn more about you. Sure. Well, my Twitter handle is at Loftus, L-O-F-T-U-S. You could also check out my author page at Pete Loftus dot com. I'm on LinkedIn and there's also a Wall Street Journal website author page as well. There you go. There you go. So what motivated you to write this book? Is this your first book, too?

It is my first book. Yeah. Awesome. So what motivated you on to write this? Well, so I was involved with, as you mentioned, from the beginning of the pandemic, writing about the pharma industry's response to the pandemic, mainly the development of the COVID vaccines. And, you know, it quickly became apparent that this was going to be, you know, an intense effort to design and develop and test the vaccine as quickly as possible so that it could have an effect, you know, on the pandemic. And I thought that Moderna was a particularly interesting player in this effort because, you know, before 2020,

most people had never heard of this company and it was a, it was a small biotech company. It had only been around for about 10 years and it had, its, its purpose was to sort of develop this new way of making drugs and vaccines using a gene-based technology. But before 2020, you know, it had been at it for about 10 years, but still hadn't delivered a successful drug or vaccine.

And so then when the pandemic hit, the company stepped into the spotlight and really tried to put this technology to test and to see if it would finally work and perhaps work in the most spectacular fashion by, you know, coming up with a vaccine for a historic pandemic. So I just thought it would be interesting to sort of tell the story of the pandemic, but also some other trends in biotech, which I can elaborate on, but to tell that through the eyes of Moderna. There you go. So what was unique about this company? Well, what was unique about them was that, you know, they actually had been generating a fair amount of hype within biotech circles and venture capital circles.

Again, I realize that most people never heard of the company before 2020. But within a certain circle with biotech and pharma, they generated a lot of buzz because, A, they were promising this new way of making drugs and vaccines based on messenger RNA, something that hadn't been done before. And then B, they actually had had a fair amount of success raising money from investors, from the government, from big pharma partners. And so, you know, in the years leading up to the pandemic, they kind of had this buzz around them. And it was, you know, it kind of stirred some debate too. There were people who were true believers in what they were doing

and thought, yes, this could be transformative. But there were also people who thought, you know, there might not be much to it, that it could be just a lot of hype and it might not pan out in the end. And so I think because there was that sort of uncertainty going into the pandemic, I just was sort of drawn to this idea that this company that had been promising certain things for years and years was going to have this chance to finally validate itself in a historic pandemic. And were they the ones who developed the, I think it's called the mRNA sort of uh concept or well they i mean they so so messenger rna as um as a research field has sort of been around for for decades um it had it had been advanced in increments by various people before madonna even existed um so there were a lot of academic researchers who were aware of messenger RNA.

And just messenger RNA, for people who don't know, is a naturally occurring substance, genetic material that's in humans and many living organisms. And it basically serves as the vehicle for the genetic information that's stored in DNA to get that out into cells and to make proteins which have specific functions. And so what a lot of academic researchers were finding over the decades was that, is there a way to harness that, to make synthetic versions of mRNA and program it to make certain proteins that could have disease-fighting properties. And so that's what was going on in, you know,

the two or three decades before Moderna's creation. What Moderna did was sort of make that jump from academic research where you're doing experiments in cell lines and petri dishes and bring it into the commercial realm, into the private for-profit enterprise and see if you can translate all that academic research into an actual drug or vaccine that you could put into people. So they were certainly a pioneer in advancing messenger RNA. The academic research had sort of preceded it. Awesome. And so is that the, you know, it seems kind of obvious, but it's good for information.

Is that the title of your book, where it comes from, The Messenger? It is, yes. Yeah, It's a play on messenger. Are they, there you go. I'm getting a plug in there for you for the title. Yeah. I worked on it. So it's kind of subconscious, but now I just blew it. Now everyone knows. Hi, Voxers. Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. Uh, I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for

leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff. With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO, I think I can offer a wonderful breadth of information and knowledge to you or anyone that you want to invite me to for your company. Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you listening to the show and be sure to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com Now back to the show. So this company, one thing my mom was reading your book is

we both have the Moderna virus in us, or virus, the Moderna antivirus in us. And, you know, I mean, the 5g on it's excellent my calls improved considerably that's a joke people don't don't don't go anywhere with that um but uh uh she was reading the book and she's like holy crap i wish i didn't invest it in the modern stuff before before it went before it went uh you know through the. Tell us a little bit about what was going on with the company and the stock and the

management there before they hit it big, I guess. Yeah. So the company went public and had its IPO, its initial public offering at the end of 2018. But in the years leading up to that, they were raising money from private investors, so venture capital firms, that sort of thing. And then once the company did go public, and I have a chapter that focuses on this because I think it is an important part of the story. And it sort of speaks to the way these things happen and the way a company is positioned to do what Moderna did in 2020.

But in any case, so they had their IPO at the end of 2018, and that involved just the top executives traveling around the world and just trying to convince fund managers, other investors, to just buy a little piece of the company. And the IPO price was about $24, I believe. And almost immediately from the day that the stock started trading on NASDAQ after the IPO was priced, it started to drop. And this was a big source of disappointment for some of the leaders

of the company. And the stock price then, it kind of fluctuated a little bit, but for the next year or so, it did sort of stay stuck in this range, you know, from like the teens to the mid-20s. And it kind of reflected, you know, people saying, all right, we think there might be some potential here, but we know that, you know, the most advanced vaccine that you have in your pipeline, this is all pre-pandemic, is still a few years away from making it to market, if it ever does. And so I think there were a lot of people waiting on the sidelines and just sort of realizing that this technology, this messenger RNA, had never been used before in any approved drug or vaccine. And yes, there's this company that's made a lot of investments and advanced the research in that, but we just don't know if it's going to work. And so, yeah, so for a good year, really the whole year plus leading up to January, 2020, um, the stock did stay in that range and then things became very

different as 2020, um, soldiered on. What was their initial intent to what sort of resolution or product were they trying to build and what for was their original intent? Well, they were looking at a few different uses for mRNA. I guess one big category was as a drug or a therapy for people who are already sick with this or that disease. And so an example was they were looking at a way to use mRNA to treat people with heart disease, where you could actually inject it right into the heart muscle during, you know, heart surgery, and that that might help patients. And other diseases, including cancer. One of the issues they ran into with using mRNA as a treatment for disease

is the issue of repeat dosing. You know, if someone is sick, they might have to take a drug for a long time. And they were concerned that there were certain properties with mRNA and with some of the component, the envelope that surrounds mRNA that they designed that could maybe cause some safety issues if it's given every day or just repeatedly over time. And so another possibility was to use it for vaccines, where you're just talking about one or two doses, maybe more, as we've seen. And so one of the viruses that they were studying it in is called cytomegalovirus. And it's a relatively common virus that doesn't really do it doesn't really do much

to most people but um it can it can cause um birth defects in children who are born to mothers infected by it and so they and there's never been a vaccine against this virus and so moderna um at the end of 2019 kind of viewed this CMV vaccine as their, quote, lead product candidate. But even that was still a few years away from completing the whole series of testing that would be necessary for the FDA to say, okay, you can sell this vaccine. So those are a few of the, and they were studying mRNA vaccines against other viruses too, Zika and some other viruses as well.

Awesome. So they're making this thing, and my understanding of the mRNA is it's basically giving your body a blueprint. Your body's always fighting stuff like early cancer, I guess, or early disease, you know, it has the ability to do some fighting on its own or, you know, stomp out cells, I guess. And my understanding is the mRNA is like a blueprint that it gives your body and goes, here's how to fight this. Is that a good? Yeah, I think, I mean, I think that's a good general description. And one of the things that Moderna and just other people who are believers in mRNA will point out is that, you know, is by comparing and contrasting it to other drug technologies. or monoclonal antibodies and similar biologic drugs where you're actually making a drug by growing a certain type of protein in big bioreactors in factories,

like bioreactors that are like three or four stories tall. And it's a very complex brew that yields this protein that's purified, and that actually has advanced different areas of medicine. It's basically amounted to better treatments for various diseases. So Moderna sees mRNA as basically a way of, instead of having external factories and these big bioreactors make the protein, let's have your own body be the manufacturer of a protein. So the way they do that is by using this synthetic mRNA in something that can be injected into you. The mRNA is coded. It has basically the genetic sequence for something that could then set in motion an immune response in your body that targets disease. And so in the case of COVID-19, the coronavirus, as some people might be aware, is known for having

these spike proteins on the surface of the virus. And these spike proteins are what the virus uses to latch on to cells in humans, if you're exposed to it, and actually gain entry into the cells to help replicate. And that kind of keeps the virus going. And so because of some research, both by Moderna, but also by places like the National Institute of Health, they thought, well, let's make a vaccine that targets the spike protein. And specifically, it's delivering mRNA that gets into human cells and then has the genetic codes to cause the human cell to make a spike protein, or to make a version of the spike protein that's found on the coronavirus. And by doing that, then the presence of the spike protein in your body, it won't actually infect you like the real coronavirus would,

but it's enough of the virus or resembles a part of the virus in a way that sets in motion an immune response. So it triggers the production of antibodies so that if you are later exposed to the coronavirus, it could, you know, depending on the time since vaccination, it could actually, you know, prevent infection, reduce your chances of infection, or if it doesn't prevent infection, it could help to mitigate the severity of disease. In all your research, did you find anything that's uh you know highly detrimental i'm thinking you know of of helping people that are out there listening to the show that are like uh you know they talk to the people who are like oh yeah it gives you you know whatever the conspiracy theory is of the week um did you in any research did you find there was

anything that was you know, bad about it? I mean, there's risk in all these sort of things, but any sort of, you know. Yeah, yeah. Well, certainly it's not perfect. And, I mean, I guess a couple of things that I would highlight are, you know, early on when the Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer vaccine, Pfizer vaccine also being an mRNA vaccine that they developed with another company called BioNTech, when they first became available in late 2020 and they started doing the mass vaccination campaign, they began to see early on that some people were having these anaphylactic reactions. So a severe type of allergic reaction that can put someone into anaphylactic shock to the point where they might need to go to the hospital or at least get something like an EpiPen or something to combat that effect. And so that was seen early on in real world use.

And so they adapted to that by basically making sure that people waited at the vaccination site for a good 15-20 minutes to make sure nothing happened and have EpiPens on hand. And they think that there was some component of the vaccine that was triggering that because it had been seen with certain other vaccines too so that's that's that's that's not a conspiracy theory like that's a real risk um the other thing that's a real risk is um these heart inflammation conditions including myocarditis.

So a lot of people may have heard of that. And so that sort of came to the attention of health authorities like a little later in 2021. You know, a few months after the mass vaccination campaign got underway, they started seeing reports of this. And health authorities have determined that there is an increased risk of myocarditis and pericarditis in people who get the mRNA vaccines. Now, they say that the risk is most pronounced among young males, teenagers or like early 20s. And so that's something to keep in mind.

And they say that, you know, it's for some people, it's still very much worth, you know, that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks. And that, you know, and that if you get COVID, that COVID itself can also increase your risk of myocarditis and pericarditis. Oh, wow. So those are a couple, I would say, just like safety- other things that might make you, you know, question its inherent safety or anything.

You know, I don't think there's anything major. You know, it is still a new technology. Yeah, there's no evil intent. Right. If there is something that, you know, it's possible that other risks could emerge if it's used for a vaccine against another disease or for a medical treatment. Like the Illuminati is using it to spy on you or some kind of crap. It was really interesting to me. One thing that I've always wondered about, I had kind of a mild reaction. I mean, the first day I kind of felt

a little funky. I was kind of had an increased heart rate, I think. And I took a nap and then I felt fine after about four hours. And then it's never bothered me since. I've had this, I think the second one. And was there a third one? I don't know if I got the third one. I think I don't qualify for the third one. I think that was an age thing. But there were so many friends that, and this, I think, was across all the vaccines. Some people, you know, had no reaction. Some people had really bad reactions where they just were sick for a day or two.

And one thing I was always curious about is I'm like, I wonder if you get really sick from the vaccine, if that's an indication that you might have been the one who died from coronavirus because of your reaction. Where it seems like my family so far has had, the people who got in my family have been asymptomatic and we had very mild reactions to the vaccine. I often wonder if there's a connection between the people who got the sickest taking the vaccine and their reaction. And they might have been the people who died from coronavirus. I don't know. Is there a correlation there? Well, it's a good question. I don't know if there's like a proven correlation. This is book two.

But there you go. But I'm glad you mentioned that because I did leave that out of my prior answer, which is that in addition to those safety risks, there's also these very near-term reactions. Usually after the second dose, I don't think it's universal. Not everyone gets the severe reactions like headache or fatigue or fever um but some people do and um and and i did look into at one point you know does does the absence of those reactions because some people get the vaccine and they they feel nothing you know it's like they go on about their regular lives and i've wondered you know i think that has made some people wonder, well, am I even getting the benefit of the vaccine if there were none of these side effects that both Moderna and I think some doctors and scientists have suggested that those side effects could be a sign that your immune system is doing what it's supposed to be doing yeah which you know the the flip side of that argument is like well if if you don't feel those symptoms is your immune system getting you ready to you know protect you from from the virus

but i think the answer was just that you can't really make assumptions about what level of protection you're getting going by the level of those kinds of side effects like the fatigue and fever and you know i think with any um antivirus you know even like the vaccines that we got with our kids right there's there's a potential that happening right it's not catching yeah there's a newer um shingles vaccine that came out within the last five years or so that has, that's given in two doses a few months apart. And that's been known to cause flu-like symptoms in people or, you know, give them some tough reactions. So it's not, it's not unprecedented. I have a friend who's actually fairly young, you know, because I guess sometimes shingles didn't show up until your later years.

But he's fairly young. I think he's in his 30s and he's sometimes shingles didn't show up till your later years but he's fairly young i think he's in his 30s and uh he's gotten shingles and man he was talking about uh the other day on uh facebook and he's like please go get the antivirus you do not want this and so it's kind of fired a light under my butt i gotta go get that thing done what were some things that people are going to find that stand out in the book? Maybe some stories you can tease or anecdotes that you can tease that people find definitely interesting? Sure. Well, I think one is, you know, I alluded to this earlier, and there is kind of a long tail of research over the years that really led to what happened in 2020 with both Moderna and Pfizer delivering these mRNA vaccines. And so, you know, but it was just a case where in like the late 80s and the 90s and even the early 2000s, there were different advances in, you know, basically seeing that mRNA could do something

that might one day have disease-fighting properties. But it was just very early stage, and it wasn't really getting a lot of recognition from the pharma industry and the medical community. And so, I mean, I think one interesting story is that there was, there was a fairly big breakthrough around 2005 that had been the culmination of several years of work by these two professors, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia,

Drew Weissman and katalin carico um katalin carico was an immigrant from hungary who came here because she she was interested in mrna way back when in the 80s and 90s but really didn't feel like she had the the resources and the and the infrastructure to advance it and wanted to come to the U.S. to do that. And anyway, so she kind of eventually got paired up with Drew Weissman, and they made some important discoveries, which was that, you know, one of the problems initially with using mRNA and trying to put it inside human cells, is that that triggers almost like a cellular immune response because it views the RNA as like a foreign entity, like a virus almost.

Wow. And so it kind of fights off this foreign object. And so they found a way that if you make certain modifications, and it's very complex molecular biology if you make certain modifications to the rna to the components of rna that that'll sort of help it slip into human cells without being viewed as a foreigner and without being destroyed and so they they did all this work and they actually met um they would just start bumping into each other at the copy machine, at the labs at Penn, and got to talking about what each of them was up to. And it sort of melded into this, well, let's use RNA in certain ways.

And by making this modification, that was recognized in certain circles as an important advance. They got a paper published in a medical journal that started to get the word out. But even there, that didn't immediately lead to the creation of a Mod, but it was more to use mRNA as almost as like a scientific tool and not to really directly turn it into a medicine or a drug. And so if you fast forward a few more years, there's another researcher at Harvard named Derek Rossi, and he was a stem cell researcher. So he's doing research in stem cells. You know, I won't go into that too much because I know I've already shared a lot of science about mRNA, but he eventually becomes part of the story because he finds that you can actually use mRNA as a tool in stem cell research. And he saw some potential there. And he published a paper and started to get some recognition.

And then he's the one that said, and he's up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, outside Boston. And he's the one that said, and he's up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, outside Boston. And he's the one that thought, I think there's some different applications for mRNA that could be useful for a company, a new startup company to advance and see what they can do with it. And that's sort of what set in motion in the year 2010, the creation of Modna um and so he kind of had to work with his with uh with harvard's um uh people who are basically in charge of of identifying the most promising research in all of the labs at harvard you know a very prominent institution and seeing if there's any commercial potential and and either like pairing up the research

with a big pharmaceutical company or seeing if it can be the basis for a startup company. And so that led to a series of connections with other scientists, including a very prominent MIT scientist and another doctor at Harvard. and then finally a venture capital firm flagship that saw promise in this and decided sort of set the ball in motion, you know, to create Moderna, to become this company that grew and advanced over the years. That's amazing, man. So, you know, we talked about this before the show. It seemed to me very early on, just from reading news reports and all the different content I was taking in, I'm like, it sounds like the Moderna antivirus is better than the other two, the Pfizer and the J&J. I think it was Johnson & Johnson.

Is that true? Is it a better antivirus than the other two? Well, yeah. I mean, there have been some studies, several studies, that seem to suggest that the Moderna vaccine can maintain its efficacy at a higher level and for longer than the other vaccines. So at the beginning, the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccine were very much neck and neck. They both had these initial very big studies in 2020 that showed they were about 94% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 for a certain duration. And then they started to see both the companies, but also just, you know, health officials in different countries, researchers, that over time the efficacy would start to wane. But it did so, it waned more quickly for Pfizer than for Moderna, according to several studies that were done on this.

And the J&J vaccine kind of started at a lower point. I mean, its efficacy in its big study was only about 66%. I mean, relative to what Pfizer and Moderna had, 66% in the context of a pandemic, I think, was actually viewed as pretty good. Beats nothing, right? Right. But it's sort of a lower starting point. And so, you know, that efficacy was maintained at a certain rate for a certain period. But the J&J vaccine has really kind of fallen by the wayside and has not been used nearly as much as the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccine. Yeah. But one more thought about the Moderna vaccine. But one more thought about the Moderna vaccine. If it is in fact truly more effective

than Pfizer's, some people explain that by the original vaccine was a higher dose than the Pfizer vaccine. So each actual vial, each actual vaccine that's injected in you, you're getting a higher dose of mRNA with the Moderna one than the Pfizer one. That could account for sort of a longer efficacy tail. But the flip side of that is there also was some evidence that that side effect I mentioned earlier, myocarditis, seemed to be occurring at a higher rate among people who got the Moderna vaccine than the Pfizer vaccine, which might also be related to the dose level. So it's kind of a delicate balance. It's interesting. I don't know if you talk about your book.

Is this mRNA going to be able to be used for other stuff, maybe some of the stuff they wanted to use it for? You know, it would be great if they could come up with something like this to cure cancer sort of thing. going to be able to be used for other stuff? Maybe some of the stuff they wanted to use it for? You know, it would be great if they could come up with something like this to cure cancer sort of thing. I mean, the hope is that it would have many more uses. It remains to be seen because it's got to go through this long battery of testing for each individual product. So right now, Moderna has, I think, more than 40 different additional mRNA drugs and vaccines in its research pipeline. Wow.

You know, most of them are in, or a majority of them are in clinical testing. So they're being tested in humans. I think that, you know, I think the success of the COVID vaccines, of the mRNA COVID vaccines, certainly would suggest that mRNA has potential for vaccines against other respiratory viruses. So maybe even things like influenza, like improve influenza vaccination beyond what we have now, you know, with seasonal flu shots. Then I think, you know, then maybe there's a chance that it also works against other types of viruses like CMV or even HIV. Moderna is testing an HIV vaccine, but HIV has been a tough nut to crack. You know, we have effective treatments for it that they don't cure it, but they make it, they turn it

into a chronic condition, but there's been no effective vaccine against HIV. So that would be, that would be something if mRNA could do that. But I think, you know, I think it's just, it's just too hard to say. You know, and then yes, there are diseases that they're using it, that they're testing it as a treatment for, including cancer. And, you know, yes, that would be, that would be something too, if mRNA could improve the treatment of cancer or at least certain types of cancers. But again, it's just got to go through all the testing first. And, you know, the pharmaceutical industry, the history of pharma development has been, there is a lot of hope at first with a new experimental drug or even an entire drug platform, like a way of making drugs, such as mRNA, and things look really good at first. But then there's just unforeseen issues that might arise

that affect either safety or effectiveness. So we'll have to see. You know what disease they can help get rid of? What's that? Stupidity. Yeah. I thought I could sense a setup there. You could sense a setup there?

Thank you for playing along. I appreciate it. I don't know if they've actually identified, you know, the biological basis for stupidity. So I'm not sure for that in the mRNA. According to George Carlin, 50% of people are dumber than average. So basically, they'd have an unlimited supply at this point. What a great sort of thing. And what a crazy

time to live through of history. You know, the race to get this vaccine, you know, taking out some of the speed bumps that used to be with the FDA so they could get this to the market. You know, I think it's pretty much unprecedented in any time in history where you had to, like, go, we really have to outweigh the risks over the benefit here and be in that situation with a gun to the head. Do you think a lot of the uh the u.s government learned from did anybody really take a hard look at what happened 100 years ago with the um spanish flu and say we really gotta not make sure we do that again well i mean i don't know about that specifically but i i do think there were efforts um you know at the cdc and even just among public health experts to look at past outbreaks and see if they could learn.

And you've almost run like war games and drills to kind of anticipate some future outbreak and to see if the right steps could be taken. I don't know if they've learned. I mean, I think, you know, I do think that like what happened in 2020 could, could provide a template for ways to get at this in the future. And I mean, you know, you mentioned how, how they, they, they move so fast and you know, you mentioned how they move so fast. And, you know, the year 2020 was just incredible.

And, you know, normally it does take something like 10 to 15 years to develop a new drug or a new vaccine. start of designing it to doing all the lab tests animal tests human tests letting the fda review all the evidence and decide whether the masses should have it um and they did all that in you know 11 months and which i know which i realized created its own issues in that i think it said a lot of skepticism like well how do we know they're detecting all the safety issues on such a compressed um time frame but i do think that um that you know the one of the things in the book is is um that moderna in the year in the years leading up to the pandemic they did cultivate a relationship with parts of the government um including the nih, including Tony Fauci's Institute, the Infectious Diseases, to kind of to see if they could collaborate and, you know, have a mutual relationship where the Moderna is benefiting from the expertise of the NIH and the NIH is learning things from Moderna. And, you know, towards the end of 2019, they were actually talking about the idea that they would run this stopwatch

drill where it was sort of an exercise in pandemic preparedness where, you know, we kept seeing these blowups, Ebola, Zika, the original SARS, the swine flu in 2009. And, you know, there was just this fear that something bigger was going to come along. And in each of those past outbreaks, they would, you know, various companies or entities would start to develop a vaccine against whatever there was an outbreak of. But then the outbreak would fade away before they really had time to fully develop the vaccine

or the vaccine just didn't really pan out. And so the NIH and Moderna wanted to do this stopwatch drill where the NIH would basically, they would pick a virus to target, like a known virus that wasn't currently a threat but had the potential to be a threat, and then say, all right, let's design a vaccine against this. We'll hand over the design to Moderna.

They have this new factory in Massachusetts that opened in 2018 that's specialized in mRNA. Let's see how fast they can make a batch of this vaccine, get it into human testing, and see whether it works or not. And then just say, you know, this thing took, whatever, five months or more. But before they could, and they were going to do this virus called Nipah, which has been detected in outbreaks in Asia in the past, but at the time wasn't a big threat.

But before they could even really get that exercise off the ground, along comes January 2020, and the CEO of Moderna, Stéphane Boncel, who we haven't talked about yet, but is a very interesting character. He's on vacation in France, but even though he's on vacation, he's up early reading the news, and he sees a report about this mysterious new virus in China. And right away, he emails a vaccine researcher at the NIH, you know, across the ocean, and says, hey, what do you know about this new virus? Is it possible that this virus could be the subject of this stopwatch drill?

And that sort of set in motion this very quick collaboration between the two, or I guess I should say an adjustment in this emergent collaboration. Instead of targeting Nipah let's let's go with the coronavirus and so that so that led very early on once the once the genetic sequence of the coronavirus became public researchers from Moderna and from the NIH were able to analyze that sequence and say within a couple of days, Hey, yeah, we think this is the best way to make a vaccine that does all the things I mentioned earlier, like targeting the spike protein. And that's what really set in motion that, that process. Well, this is an amazing, been an amazing time in history, very difficult and challenging one for a lot of people, but

you know, thank, thank God, you know, some people were working on this sort of stuff and we had enough people, you know, doing stuff. But, yeah, documenting the history of what happened at this time and how we got through it, I'm sure we'll be talking about probably 100 years from now. I think so. If we're still here. Right.

Yeah, we'll see. Yeah. Yeah, like I mentioned, you know, you mentioned the Spanish flu epidemic and there were other things like there was a swine flu pandemic in the mid-70s where the U.S. decided to like very quickly develop a vaccine against it. But then they were seeing some serious side effects among some service members that it was being tested on at a military base. And so that kind of led to a little bit of a fiasco. But then on the other hand, then you have the race for the polio vaccine in the 50s, which turned out to be largely a huge success. And so there were different templates about how to respond.

And in 2020, things were moving so fast. And so people in the government and people at these companies had to really kind of make quick decisions about, you know, what to do and always have in the back of their mind this perhaps uncertainty about, is this going to turn out like polio vaccine effort? Or is this going to turn out like something that was less successful? And I think, you know, and I really do try to capture in the book that level of urgency and uncertainty that emerged mainly in the spring of 2020. You know, once it came here, once it was filling up hospital emergency rooms, you know, the sense that this was real and we got to do something about it quickly.

So that's really one of the things that I wanted to convey in the book. There you go. It'll make a great movie, man. All the players and characters and everything else. Well, it's been wonderful, Pete, to have you on the show. Thank you very much for coming on. We certainly appreciate it. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed the discussion. Enjoy your show.

There you go. Thank you. And also, can you give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs, please? Sure. On Twitter, I can be found at Loftus, L-O-F-T-U-S. I also have an author website called Pete Loftus dot com and can be found on LinkedIn, on the Wall Street Journal. There is an author page with more information about me and my articles. There you go.

You may have heard of the Wall Street Journal. I've been reading it since I was, I think, 18. Brilliant paper. It's paper. That's how long I've been reading. I remember when it was. Well, I still call it that, too. I used to have it delivered to my house, you know, in the roll, you know.

Yeah. And so, yeah, I'm old. What can I say? Pick it up wherever fine books are sold. But remember, stay at those dark alleyway bookstores. Only go to where the fine bookstores are sold because the dark ones, I went there the other day and I got mugged and needed a tetanus shot. So don't do that.

You want to keep your watches. I'm still missing mine. Find bookstores wherever they're sold. The Messenger, Moderna, the vaccine, and the business gamble that changed the world. Something we'll be talking about, I'm sure, for a long time. The wonder of how we got through it all. It was the crazy days. What is the old Chinese curse?

From Bobby Kennedy, he quoted it once. May you live in interesting times. And we certainly have and certainly do today. Thanks for tuning in to my audience. Be sure to go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss, YouTube.com, Fortress Chris Foss, all the places we are in those crazy corners of the Internet. You know, go find them, wherever those kids are,

except for Snapchat for the most obvious of reasons. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.