Speaker 1: I'm Katie Kuric, and welcome to Next Question. For the
Speaker 1: last nine months, as the coronavirus swept across the world,
Speaker 1: devastating so many lives in its wake, scientists have been
Speaker 1: working around the clock to develop a safe and effective
Speaker 1: vaccine in record time. And now, in just the last
Speaker 1: few weeks, the result from all of this hard work
Speaker 1: is starting to come in and it's good news, really
Speaker 1: good news. Remember what that's like. Fisser has sought emergency
Speaker 1: use authorization for its vaccine after a study showed it
Speaker 1: was effective. Asked. Resenica has seemed very promising results as well,
Speaker 1: although they're still figuring out the dosing. And then there's Maderna,
Speaker 1: a tiny biotech firm compared to these giants, which has
Speaker 1: also cracked the code on a vaccine using a novel approach.
Speaker 1: Stephen Hoague is a doctor, a scientist, and the president
Speaker 1: of Maderna. I had a wide ranging conversation with him
Speaker 1: about his company, the pandemic, and the vaccines and the pipeline,
Speaker 1: who gets them and when call this vaccines for dummies.
Speaker 1: I started by asking him how excited he was when
Speaker 1: he first heard the news that Maderna was making it happen,
Speaker 1: doctor Hope. Last week, Maderna announced it had developed a
Speaker 1: vaccine that was ninety four point five effective. What went
Speaker 1: through your head when you heard the news, Well, I
Speaker 1: had the privilege of actually hearing it live from the
Speaker 1: Independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board. It's called it dsmb UM.
Speaker 1: So you're called into a virtual room with eight or
Speaker 1: nine senior academics, real leaders in their field, and they
Speaker 1: start reading out the results to you. And the first
Speaker 1: bit was a little bit of the procedure, and the
Speaker 1: second they started calling out the case numbers, and they
Speaker 1: said that of the cases cases were on placebo. And
Speaker 1: I'll have to admit I went ear to ear with
Speaker 1: a grin and almost didn't hear anything else for the
Speaker 1: next two minutes. Um. It was this feeling of incredible relief.
Speaker 1: We've been working really hard for a year, but for
Speaker 1: many years on this technology, and it's just this feeling of, oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness, it hasn't all been for nothing. There is
Speaker 1: going to be a vaccine. It's available. It quickly passed
Speaker 1: within within about a minute or two, it turned into
Speaker 1: this dread of the work we have ahead to manufacture
Speaker 1: and distribute hundreds of millions of doses in the vaccine.
Speaker 1: But but it was a really wonderful day lessunday. Tell
Speaker 1: me what that means when you say without getting too
Speaker 1: and the weeds. Uh, ninety of the patients were on placebo.
Speaker 1: I mean, can you just boil down the news you heard?
Speaker 1: And so somebody at home without any kind of medical
Speaker 1: background might understand. Sure. Yeah. Let me let me start
Speaker 1: by described being the study that we were that we
Speaker 1: were running. So the clinical trial involved thirty tho participants
Speaker 1: and the value of these clinical trials is that their
Speaker 1: placebo control. And so you randomize people one to want
Speaker 1: to either receive a placebo or the vaccine. And so
Speaker 1: there's fifteen thousand people that received placebo and fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: people that receive vaccine. And for the last two to
Speaker 1: three months, those people have been going about their daily lives,
Speaker 1: hopefully practicing social distance and other things, but ultimately going
Speaker 1: to work and doing things that might give them a
Speaker 1: risk of infection. And what we've been doing is an
Speaker 1: independent data and Safety Monitoring board has been counting out
Speaker 1: every time somebody becomes infected with COVID where you confirm
Speaker 1: its COVID and they've become ill, maybe severe COVID or mild,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter. They're they're just trying to see
Speaker 1: where their cases happen, and those cases are counted up
Speaker 1: until there's overwhelming statistical evidence that there were more cases
Speaker 1: on the placebo arm than the vaccine arm. And as
Speaker 1: that happened over the last three months, what eventually came transpire,
Speaker 1: what we and about last Sunday was that they had
Speaker 1: reached nine cases. Ninety out of the fifteen thousand people
Speaker 1: on the placebo had developed COVID, and that contrasted with
Speaker 1: in the fifteen received vaccine only five cases. Only five
Speaker 1: people had contracted CODE, which meant that the relative protection
Speaker 1: was about ninety four point five the difference between the
Speaker 1: ninety out of fifteen thousand and five. You described the
Speaker 1: moments before the call revealing these results as the most
Speaker 1: nerve wracking hour of nerves, of a nerve wracking week,
Speaker 1: of a nerve racking year. Yes, it's been really long.
Speaker 1: I think we've all lived it, uh and so our
Speaker 1: experience that during our my experience have been no different
Speaker 1: in some ways than what we've all gone through in
Speaker 1: our lives. Everything feels disrupted, everything feels like it's on pause.
Speaker 1: The difference for us is that we have been working
Speaker 1: nearly seven for about about nine ten months now, never
Speaker 1: a day off, trying to advance this vaccine. You know,
Speaker 1: on the belief that it was going to make a difference,
Speaker 1: but until you have proof, it's just belief. And so, uh,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a nerve right that final hour,
Speaker 1: that final weekend when you knew the results were in.
Speaker 1: But it's a bit like it's at the OSCARS and
Speaker 1: it's an infin in an envelope. You're not allowed to
Speaker 1: open the envelope. Only the Independent Data Safety Monitoring Board
Speaker 1: is allowed to open it. And they've got a scheduled
Speaker 1: meeting two days from now, and so for those forty
Speaker 1: eight hours, you're just tossing and turning. Um, my wife said,
Speaker 1: I was. I didn't sleep the entire time. I thought
Speaker 1: I did, but apparently I tossed and turned all mine
Speaker 1: both right, And I know everybody else that was involved
Speaker 1: in the study, even outside of the company, probably felt
Speaker 1: the same way. Uh. And then of course you get
Speaker 1: news that they've gone into the room. Um, and so
Speaker 1: they've the virtual room, they started their meeting, and you're
Speaker 1: just waiting, just waiting for them to call you in,
Speaker 1: and an hour goes by, and a second hour goes by,
Speaker 1: and you're you're you're biting your finger, and I was going, Wow,
Speaker 1: what's going on? How could it be so difficult? Uh?
Speaker 1: And it was finally at that last moment that we
Speaker 1: were let in about noon on Sunday, UH and heard
Speaker 1: the results live. Operation warp Speed basically encouraged a lot
Speaker 1: of companies to come up with vaccines, and in fact,
Speaker 1: Viser and now astro Zeneca are coming up with vaccines.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about these other companies that are
Speaker 1: coming forward with their own vaccines? Is that good news?
Speaker 1: I think it's great news. Um. I think if you
Speaker 1: everybody sort of accepts that the only way we're really
Speaker 1: going to stop this pandemic is a vaccine. We have
Speaker 1: to beat the virus everywhere. And since there's billions of
Speaker 1: us on the planets and you know us, we need
Speaker 1: many billions of doses. And so from the beginning, even
Speaker 1: from earliest part of this year, we said the most
Speaker 1: vaccine we'd probably be able to make in one is
Speaker 1: about a billion doses, and we're still on track for that.
Speaker 1: But one billion doses will only cover half a billion people,
Speaker 1: five and a million people. There two doses per person exactly,
Speaker 1: that's right. So since our vaccine requires two doses per person,
Speaker 1: it would only cover five or million. So there are
Speaker 1: literally billions of doses more that need to be created
Speaker 1: by other persons. So as a group of companies, we've
Speaker 1: actually been rooting for each other because if we only
Speaker 1: end up with five million people covered, the pandemic doesn't end.
Speaker 1: We don't get our lives back. Um. And so what's
Speaker 1: really been happening between the companies coordinated by Operation warp Speed,
Speaker 1: But frankly, I think between the companies organically is an
Speaker 1: unprecedented level of coordination because everybody recognizes that we all
Speaker 1: have to deliver. When when any one of us achieves
Speaker 1: a result like we did last week, we often email
Speaker 1: each other and I emailed congratulations to ask Prozonica just
Speaker 1: this week, because we're counting on each other. We're counting
Speaker 1: on them to come through, just like they were counting
Speaker 1: on us to come through to feed back to ours.
Speaker 1: Why is it so difficult to produce huge amounts of
Speaker 1: these vaccines. No, it's the numbers. If you think about it,
Speaker 1: the absolute numbers of vaccines there's not many things that
Speaker 1: we create as in this world, and drugs have to
Speaker 1: be made to a very high standard quality UM. That
Speaker 1: have that to be a complexity that we make billions of, right,
Speaker 1: we make lots of things that are smaller UM, but
Speaker 1: it's the it's the complexity of making a medicine making
Speaker 1: sure it's done to the highest quality standards and the
Speaker 1: highest degree of control. That adds the additional challenge. It's
Speaker 1: not just like trying to create something else that we
Speaker 1: might create billions of every year as a society. And
Speaker 1: so you have to invest in manufacturing. You have to
Speaker 1: invest in purpose built manufacturing lines, you have to train people.
Speaker 1: They have to get extremely good. You can't get it
Speaker 1: right of the time. It has to be multiple sigma
Speaker 1: here to be nine UM. And you have to establish
Speaker 1: quality systems around that that allow you to measure it
Speaker 1: and control it and make sure that when somebody takes
Speaker 1: your vaccine, whether it's madonnas or astrosenacers or visors, they
Speaker 1: can be sure it's a high quality vaccine. It's gonna
Speaker 1: work for them. That process just takes time and money
Speaker 1: and effort from people, and even with the incredible financial
Speaker 1: resources that the US government has brought to their UM
Speaker 1: and many of the companies are brought to their it's
Speaker 1: still a huge lift, UM, and there's still lots of
Speaker 1: potholes along the way that you have to plan for
Speaker 1: and get act. Let's talk about the technique that you
Speaker 1: and Fizer use, something called messenger RNA. Tell me about
Speaker 1: tried to explain it to me. I think I got it,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to give you a chance. Can you
Speaker 1: explain for people who have an eighth grade understanding of science,
Speaker 1: how this actually works? Right? This is one Katie, I
Speaker 1: might have to take a couple of stabs at because
Speaker 1: I'm still working on explaining this to some of my
Speaker 1: family after after ten years in the field. It's it's
Speaker 1: there's something a little bit counterintuitive about it. But but
Speaker 1: let me try so. Messenger RNA is a molecule that
Speaker 1: exists in all of ourselves. UM. That is the instructions
Speaker 1: for making every protein in your body, every protein in life, UM.
Speaker 1: And so it's just a set of instructions. It literally
Speaker 1: tells us all what protein to make, it how much
Speaker 1: of it to make. It's a very natural molecule. In fact,
Speaker 1: if it's one of the oldest molecules in life, and
Speaker 1: what we do as a message company is rather than
Speaker 1: giving you the protein, which is what most vaccines do.
Speaker 1: If you think about a flu vaccine, you'll grow up
Speaker 1: the protein and eggs or something like that. You'll purify it.
Speaker 1: You'll then administer it in the body will have an
Speaker 1: immune response to that protein, so learn how to fight
Speaker 1: against the virus that protein. What messenger ARNA is is
Speaker 1: it's just the instructions for the body to make that
Speaker 1: protein itself. It sort of works with your body, not
Speaker 1: on your body. It provides the instructions to yournune system
Speaker 1: so they can make copies of the protein as if
Speaker 1: they'd encounter the virus, as if Stars Kobe two had
Speaker 1: snuck in, but actually it hadn't. They just got one
Speaker 1: piece of instructions, one part of the virus that they
Speaker 1: then make copies of that protein and then learn how
Speaker 1: to defend against it. In this case the spike protein,
Speaker 1: so it probably I am getting it, so it triggers
Speaker 1: the immune response in both cases, but in this case
Speaker 1: you're not You're you're not injecting the body with a
Speaker 1: version of the virus. You're simply instructing the cells how
Speaker 1: to deal with the virus. If in fact it happens,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's exactly right. And the big differences do
Speaker 1: you inject the virus or a broken piece of the
Speaker 1: virus or do you just inject the instructions for what
Speaker 1: the virus looks like? If you will all wanted toister that,
Speaker 1: then the immune system gets to learn on and train
Speaker 1: on and when it encounters the virus, it's not naive.
Speaker 1: Your immune system knows what it's looking for, says, oh,
Speaker 1: I've seen this, I've seen this wanted tister before, and
Speaker 1: I'm now going to be able to protect this. So
Speaker 1: this is the method that Maderna and Visor used, But
Speaker 1: astro Zenicas is more old school. It is UM, it's
Speaker 1: more UM, it's more the traditional way. There are there
Speaker 1: are six big efforts in vaccines under the rubric of
Speaker 1: operation work, speed, and so there's two Messenger Arny companies,
Speaker 1: and there's two companies working on viral vectors is what
Speaker 1: they're called. And so astra Zeneca and Johnson and Johnson
Speaker 1: are both working on viral vectors. What this means is
Speaker 1: you take another virus. In the case of astrosenneca, it's
Speaker 1: a twopen ze virus. And you cause that virus to
Speaker 1: make a copy of one of the proteins on the
Speaker 1: stars copy two virus, and so it kind of makes
Speaker 1: a mimic and you inject that You grow up that virus,
Speaker 1: and then you inject that virus into people and it
Speaker 1: sneaks into their immune system, infects them because it's a
Speaker 1: virus and makes copies of that protein. That technology using
Speaker 1: using engineered viruses has been around a bit longer. The
Speaker 1: longest in the tooth technology is actually something called we're
Speaker 1: combinant proteins um and the last couple of companies, so
Speaker 1: Sena Fee and a company called Novavax, are working on
Speaker 1: a combinant protein appropaches. That's where similar to what you're
Speaker 1: used to do with your flu vaccine, you grow up
Speaker 1: the protein in a culture or in the case of
Speaker 1: fluids and eggs, and you purify that protein now from
Speaker 1: the surface of the virus, and then you inject that
Speaker 1: piece of the virus into the body. Knowing that you
Speaker 1: may have a best at interest. Dr Hope Um, is
Speaker 1: there any approach that is preferable over the others. I'll
Speaker 1: confess I'm I'm ten years into a story. Believing messenger
Speaker 1: RNA is going to be the best approach. So I'm
Speaker 1: not a d percent objective, but I am a scientist
Speaker 1: as well, and I think they all have pluses and minuses.
Speaker 1: One of the advantages of messenger RNA that we've always
Speaker 1: thought uh is, frankly is being brought to bear right
Speaker 1: now is the fact that it's so versatile. The fact
Speaker 1: that it's really just information. It's more of a digital
Speaker 1: technology where we can use our systems are manufacturing systems
Speaker 1: for any vaccine has allowed us to go incredibly fast,
Speaker 1: and I think that proof is in the pudding in
Speaker 1: the sense that both Fiser and Maderna to Messenger RNA
Speaker 1: approaches have been first to be able to produce phase
Speaker 1: three results despite these being new technologies, and hopefully you're
Speaker 1: going to be able to distribute millions of doses this year.
Speaker 1: Being objective, I think the other approach that is the
Speaker 1: most established is there comminant protein approaches. So the approach
Speaker 1: being taken by Santa Fia Nova vacs where you make
Speaker 1: the protein, you purify it using pretty traditional approaches, and
Speaker 1: then you injected into the arm directly. And that's a
Speaker 1: situation as an approach that's got many decades of experience
Speaker 1: UM and ultimately works well within the infrastructure for vaccine
Speaker 1: distribution UM that already exists out there because it's you know,
Speaker 1: decades old. And so if you were to sort of
Speaker 1: pick on the extremes, the fast and new UM and
Speaker 1: hopefully in the long term, I believe quite quite positively
Speaker 1: disruptive would be Messenger RNA and the more established UM
Speaker 1: and precedented or common protein are probably the most known.
Speaker 1: The adamovol vector approaches being taken by Astra, Zeneca and
Speaker 1: and Johnson and Johnson are all equally valid. There's there's
Speaker 1: not really the same history as our common protein and
Speaker 1: they're not quite as fast and simple as Messenger our name,
Speaker 1: but will be very grateful if they're able to deliver
Speaker 1: billions of doses and help self the pandemic. And so
Speaker 1: you're rooting for all of them, and frankly, I would
Speaker 1: take any of them. I hope to get a Maderna
Speaker 1: vaccine personally selfishly, but I would I would feel comfortable
Speaker 1: based on the data that I'm seeing on phase three
Speaker 1: receiving union. When we come back more with Maderna President
Speaker 1: Dr Stephen Hogue once again, Dr Stephen Hogue president of MADERNA.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Messenger RNA. Does it portend a lot
Speaker 1: of exciting breakthroughs for other diseases? You know, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: why can't we come up with a cure for cancer
Speaker 1: if we can get operation warp speed to develop all
Speaker 1: these different vaccines and record time. It's a great question.
Speaker 1: And we at Maderna had been working on this for
Speaker 1: about a decade um and so we actually have five
Speaker 1: programs in clinical trials against cancer right now using message
Speaker 1: our including at least two programs that are vaccine approaches
Speaker 1: and three programs that are therapeutic approaches. Those are in
Speaker 1: earlier stages of development and so their phase one in
Speaker 1: phase two studies, and we're still proving the potential of
Speaker 1: the technology there. But we have approaches in other therapeutic
Speaker 1: carriers as well, rare diseases and autommune diseases. And we
Speaker 1: do think ultimately this technology will change the way people
Speaker 1: make medicine in the future. We think about it, we
Speaker 1: move away from creating drugs that work on your body
Speaker 1: they kind of come from the outside and do something
Speaker 1: to it, and actually try and move to a world
Speaker 1: where we're just providing information to yourselves to your body
Speaker 1: in the way that's used to processing it um and
Speaker 1: the instructions for for how to either treate a disease
Speaker 1: like cancer or prevent a disease like stars Kobe and
Speaker 1: I think that's the exciting part of messenger urity that's
Speaker 1: generated a lot of enthusiasm for us over the last decade.
Speaker 1: We never intended to be a COVID nineteen company. We
Speaker 1: still don't think of ourselves as a COVID nineteen company.
Speaker 1: We've certainly got an allot of attention to become a
Speaker 1: bit of a household team because of it, and so
Speaker 1: in that sense we have to recognize it. But I
Speaker 1: think the potential of the technology is is just starting
Speaker 1: to be discovered, and I'm really excited about the work
Speaker 1: we're doing exactly in cancer right now, because I think
Speaker 1: that that potential could impact our allives as well. Other
Speaker 1: than cancer. Do you see promise and other diseases like
Speaker 1: I don't know, Parkinson's for example, and some of these
Speaker 1: neuromuscular disorders at Alzheimer's. I mean, do you think that
Speaker 1: that you can can sort of help the body respond
Speaker 1: to some of these things when it goes haywire? I
Speaker 1: think so the question is when, all right, if you
Speaker 1: if you ask somebody like me, an entrepreneur, UM, it's
Speaker 1: just a question of time. And I do think some
Speaker 1: of those diseases, well, we will get there and I
Speaker 1: absolutely believe will make a difference, but it will probably
Speaker 1: take a decade. And the reason I say that is
Speaker 1: there's a lot of complexity in some of the diseases
Speaker 1: you're listing out Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. UM there's a huge
Speaker 1: inflammatory component of the immune system there, but there's also
Speaker 1: other things happening, and so it will take some time
Speaker 1: to figure out how to use a new technology like
Speaker 1: this to try and address those diseases. Whereas some of
Speaker 1: the things like infectious disease, metabolic diseases, heart diseases, where
Speaker 1: we're actually working right now in clinical trials, UM, you
Speaker 1: have a better understanding what's going to be required when
Speaker 1: you use a new technology of this. So I view
Speaker 1: it over the twenty thirty year time horizon as absolutely
Speaker 1: and that's what we're committed to trying to do. And
Speaker 1: obviously cancer, as you mentioned, is a huge area of
Speaker 1: rethink you can have an impact. Absolutely, yeah, we've made
Speaker 1: In fact, if you look at our pipeline. The second
Speaker 1: largest area of clinical work we're doing clinical trials is
Speaker 1: in cancer, any particular cancer. I'm just curious. So we
Speaker 1: have our most advanced programs. There's three of them. UM.
Speaker 1: One is in skin cancer and so melanoma. There's a
Speaker 1: it's a randomized phase to traveling. We have a program
Speaker 1: in head and neck cancer SCREAM and cell carcinoma in
Speaker 1: the head and neck UM that's in an expansion covert.
Speaker 1: And then we have a no variant cancer phase to
Speaker 1: study that's up and running as well. There's other cancers
Speaker 1: we're looking in, but those are the three most advanced.
Speaker 1: So exciting I think to hear about this and hopefully
Speaker 1: calling cancer that's my particular area of interest and concerned,
Speaker 1: so hopefully you guys can work on that too. Let
Speaker 1: me move back to the back vaccine sort of in general,
Speaker 1: let's talk about distribution, if we could, Doctor Hoag, how
Speaker 1: involved are you in distribution and how concerned are you
Speaker 1: about rapid distribution to the populations who need it the most?
Speaker 1: So I think we're all deeply focused on making sure
Speaker 1: the vaccine rapidly becomes available as many people as possible. Selfishly,
Speaker 1: we want our lives back. But truly it's been about
Speaker 1: all the what we've done is all for not if
Speaker 1: we can't get the vaccine in the arms of people
Speaker 1: who needn't want it UM. So we've worked with the
Speaker 1: US government and particularly the folks at the Department of
Speaker 1: Defense under operational warp speed. It's a general Tarnis team
Speaker 1: pretty intensely over the summer and fall in anticipation of
Speaker 1: an approval or an emergency use authorization. It's such that
Speaker 1: you know, we now know down to the hour what's
Speaker 1: happening post approval, post authorization to try and get the
Speaker 1: truck's rolling, if you will, to the States so they
Speaker 1: have access to the vaccine. We've been working to make
Speaker 1: sure they understand all of the characteristics of the vaccine,
Speaker 1: how it has to be stored and distributed. We've been
Speaker 1: working with companies that they brought in, like McKesson uh
Speaker 1: to to start deepoting and stockpiling some of the vaccine
Speaker 1: UM and we're going to continue to work around the
Speaker 1: Clockett it seems we're literally two seven as an operation
Speaker 1: right now. UM to make sure that we're manufacturing on
Speaker 1: a regular schedule, delivering those are getting filled, and then
Speaker 1: ultimately move into the distribution supply chain. It's important to
Speaker 1: note that as a company, our limits we we have,
Speaker 1: we're only about people, mostly in Massachusetts, and so where
Speaker 1: we will hand off to the government and rely on
Speaker 1: the government for distribution is after filling at the factory
Speaker 1: and ultimately from a depot. Distributing to the states is
Speaker 1: something that really only the United States government and the
Speaker 1: states can can manage effectively. So that will be the
Speaker 1: primary mendisum by which people will get their vaccines through
Speaker 1: their state departments out. Have you guys applied for emergency
Speaker 1: authorization already? If not, what we've said is sometime in
Speaker 1: the next week or so, we expect we will, but
Speaker 1: we've got work to do. We just got access to
Speaker 1: the data last week and as you can imagine, there's
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount to pour over and to prepare UH
Speaker 1: appropriate and high quality filing for the d So we're
Speaker 1: working on that now. Expect that to happen um in
Speaker 1: the next week or so and then UH and then
Speaker 1: we're hoping for an emergencies authorization sometimes a second half
Speaker 1: to set. When do you think your vaccine can get
Speaker 1: out there? Do you have any timetable, yet it's entirely
Speaker 1: dependent upon the FDA, So you know, I always want
Speaker 1: to make clear that they have a solemn and important
Speaker 1: responsibility to decide that it's appropriate distribute that we think
Speaker 1: the data is compelling, and we're going to ask for
Speaker 1: permission to do that. But it's it's a very important
Speaker 1: part of our society that we have an entrepreneurship on
Speaker 1: one hand, and then we have strong civil service that
Speaker 1: actually provides a check on that and a review on that,
Speaker 1: and that is a key part of our industry. So
Speaker 1: the FDA are the only people that can decide when
Speaker 1: this happens. But on the assumption that they decide uh
Speaker 1: within the next two to three weeks, let's say, is
Speaker 1: in the middle of December, which is where we are
Speaker 1: we're aiming ourselves. We want to make sure that we
Speaker 1: have as much vaccine available as possible for the second
Speaker 1: half of December to start that distribution process, and we've
Speaker 1: been working towards about twenty million doses by the end
Speaker 1: of December that we'd be able to hand off to
Speaker 1: the folks at operation work speed, so that they can
Speaker 1: actually literally get it into vaccine centers as fast as possible,
Speaker 1: and that would vaccinate ten million people because doses are required,
Speaker 1: that's right, So twenty million doses by the end of
Speaker 1: December would vaccinate ten million people. But we'll continue manufacturing
Speaker 1: and so almost every week or every other week from
Speaker 1: then forward, we will keep making deliveries. We've committed to
Speaker 1: deliver the first one million doses to the United States government,
Speaker 1: and frankly, there are options for them to buy up
Speaker 1: to five million more UH. And so that first one
Speaker 1: million doses will be delivering, you know, on a straight
Speaker 1: schedule through January and February, and then perhaps continuing through
Speaker 1: March a point and may, depending upon whether there's a need.
Speaker 1: Who will get the vaccine first? Do you know, Dr
Speaker 1: oge I don't. It really is up to the c
Speaker 1: d C UM and their Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices UM.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, the federal government is
Speaker 1: as deluted to them, the responsibility figure out who gets
Speaker 1: it first. It's fair to say, though that the CDC
Speaker 1: will just issue guidelines. UH. What will really happen is
Speaker 1: Operation morps Speed will distribute our twenty million doses in
Speaker 1: December to the States in proportion to their jurisdictions, and
Speaker 1: then the individual states will look at the CDC guidelines,
Speaker 1: look at what's happening in their communities, and decide the
Speaker 1: best place to deploy. I think if everything goes to
Speaker 1: the CDC guidelines, it's pretty clear that the healthcare providers,
Speaker 1: those frontline healthcare workers that we need to keep safe
Speaker 1: during the pandemic so that we can keep caring for
Speaker 1: people when they come out, they're going to be the
Speaker 1: first folks vaccinated, and there maybe up to twenty million
Speaker 1: of them across the country. Does include people who need
Speaker 1: to work in nursing homes and hospitals and primary care clinics,
Speaker 1: and that's not just to make sure that they're protected
Speaker 1: from COVID for COVID sake, but to make sure that
Speaker 1: they're able to do all the other important things to
Speaker 1: protect people who are having heart attacks or pneumonia or
Speaker 1: all the other things that happened in our day to
Speaker 1: day lives, UM, and that they're not outstick during this
Speaker 1: important time. UM. Then I think you moved to critical infrastructure,
Speaker 1: so frontline workers, people who work in food security, people
Speaker 1: who work in UM, in government, and firefighters, police first responders,
Speaker 1: and then ultimately to those that are the highest risk
Speaker 1: of severe COVID nineteen, so those over the age of
Speaker 1: sixty five or those who have co morbid conditions. And
Speaker 1: I think that's where the CDCs recommendation will come out.
Speaker 1: Certainly based on the conversations, that's what it seems like
Speaker 1: will be the guy that's what about children? School aged children?
Speaker 1: Will school aged children be vaccinated? I hope. So. I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you, as a parent who's been doing virtual
Speaker 1: school for for most of the fall and expect to
Speaker 1: do it for a good part of the next year, UM,
Speaker 1: I feel deeply to need to get our kids back
Speaker 1: in school, make sure the teachers are saving and get
Speaker 1: our kids back in school. And so, as a company, Maderna,
Speaker 1: just like some of the other companies, have begun the
Speaker 1: work of showing the vaccine is safe and effective in children. UM.
Speaker 1: That starts with adolescence, so those twelve one up and
Speaker 1: then you move into the five to twelve year old
Speaker 1: school age kids, and those studies are actually starting in
Speaker 1: the coming weeks with us and others. The goal of
Speaker 1: those will be that by let's say the end of
Speaker 1: this school year, there will be data show the vaccine
Speaker 1: is safe and effective you know the right dose to
Speaker 1: give to children, and ultimately we all want to make
Speaker 1: sure that everybody who's a schools child could receive a
Speaker 1: vaccine before next school year, so that we could we
Speaker 1: could start in September of two one the normal school year,
Speaker 1: Soccer games on Saturdays and everything that we've come to
Speaker 1: miss so well can't be part of another clinical trial
Speaker 1: because they weren't part of the initial ones. Correct, that's correct.
Speaker 1: They weren't part of the initial ones UM, and that's appropriate.
Speaker 1: You want to make sure a vaccine is safe and
Speaker 1: effective in adults before you enroll a kid. There's there's
Speaker 1: there's obviously a whole bunch of extra considerations, including the
Speaker 1: fact that a child, um you know, is immunologically can
Speaker 1: be different, and so you can you want to make
Speaker 1: sure that there's a potential, clear, potential benefit of the
Speaker 1: vaccine before you give it to a job. So children
Speaker 1: were not initially involved in the Phase three trials, but
Speaker 1: they are rapidly getting UM tested in them right now,
Speaker 1: and those are much smaller trials. You do not need
Speaker 1: thirty thousand people. It's more like a couple of thousand children,
Speaker 1: because really all you're looking for there is to make
Speaker 1: sure that there's nothing surprising in terms of safety or
Speaker 1: the dose level that you need in a trial, and
Speaker 1: that's not you're not looking for infections as a measure
Speaker 1: of efficacy. I know diversity in clinical trials is critically
Speaker 1: important and there hasn't been nearly enough in the past.
Speaker 1: How were you able to ensure that you did have
Speaker 1: a diverse population. Well, the first thing is we had
Speaker 1: to recognize that initially it wasn't very diverse, and so
Speaker 1: we started our clinical trial at the very end of July,
Speaker 1: and by the end of August, about one month in,
Speaker 1: we'd recruited about half the trial, about fifteen thousand and
Speaker 1: thirty thousand people. But the population was was unfortunately not
Speaker 1: very diverse. Um there was only four five percent African American,
Speaker 1: there was around ten percent of those of Hispanic or
Speaker 1: Latino descent, and it was it was clear that we
Speaker 1: were not going to have While that might be okay
Speaker 1: by historical standards, it was not going to be enough
Speaker 1: to generate real confidence in the vaccine in those communities,
Speaker 1: and so we took a very difficult choice. M the
Speaker 1: first week in September, we came up publicly and said
Speaker 1: we're failing to meet our expectations. We need to look
Speaker 1: more like the country in terms of the ethnic makeup
Speaker 1: of our of our trial, and therefore we're going to
Speaker 1: slow down our quote unquot trial in the middle of
Speaker 1: the pandemic in a bit of a race against the
Speaker 1: virus and maybe a friendly race against other companies. That
Speaker 1: was a pretty tough choice to me, but it was
Speaker 1: one that we thought was the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: The reason we slowed down is that we we thought
Speaker 1: we need to go work with the one hundred investigator
Speaker 1: sites across the country that we were working with. These
Speaker 1: are doctor's offices and local communities UM and help them
Speaker 1: figure out how to reach out to those communities that
Speaker 1: are underrepresentative, particularly the black and hispact communities UM who
Speaker 1: were massively underrepresented our study, and do everything we can
Speaker 1: to help, you know, work with them, build trust with
Speaker 1: those You have to leave the door open, you have
Speaker 1: to work three times. Is hard in places where there
Speaker 1: is not trust, and there's a huge trust deficit in
Speaker 1: those communities. We had to bring in new materials, we
Speaker 1: had to do training on bias, we had to do
Speaker 1: we did a whole range of things. We even engaged
Speaker 1: Dr Fauci and and the Surgeon General in outreach, we
Speaker 1: brought in other experts and it was all focused on
Speaker 1: let's do everything we can to try and invite those
Speaker 1: communities with the trial. We're really pleased to say that
Speaker 1: six or eight weeks later, when we completed enrollment, we'd
Speaker 1: actually increased the ethnic and racial makeup of study to
Speaker 1: be almost bang onto the United States. Um there was
Speaker 1: only sixty folks of white non Hispanic origin over over
Speaker 1: spending her Latin X, which is obviously higher than you
Speaker 1: see in the country, and over ten percent Black African American,
Speaker 1: which is a little bit lower than you see in
Speaker 1: the country, but substantially. It gives us great pleasure m
Speaker 1: to have accomplished that. But that's just the first step.
Speaker 1: We know that the data therefore will be sufficiently representative
Speaker 1: that people from those communities to have confidence the vaccine
Speaker 1: was evaluated and if it's effective, it's effective in them,
Speaker 1: and in fact we announced that it looks terrific. The
Speaker 1: results look equally good in those populations, but that still
Speaker 1: requires us to work the next step to build trust
Speaker 1: with those communities to receive the vaccine, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of vaccine have with hesitancy across the country, including
Speaker 1: in those communities, and we've got work to do there.
Speaker 1: The one source of optimism that I'll take from it
Speaker 1: is it it did show that in the middle of
Speaker 1: a very difficult year on those sorts of issues on
Speaker 1: race relations in particular, if you're willing to take the time,
Speaker 1: slow down and work can build trust. It's hard work,
Speaker 1: but you can do it. Um. And I I think
Speaker 1: we were proudest of all of those one sites and
Speaker 1: those investigators, they're the real heroes there. And actually they
Speaker 1: went back into communities that had not wanted to participate,
Speaker 1: tried harder and build those relationships. So I take optimism
Speaker 1: from it. I always I'm optimistic by nature. Um. But
Speaker 1: it does show that it requires more work. Um, That
Speaker 1: if you're gonna correct an inequity or and imbalance, you're
Speaker 1: going to have to do it with additional effort. It's
Speaker 1: not going to come just from equity your valance. And
Speaker 1: as you say, you still have a lot of work
Speaker 1: to do to convince the population writ large that people
Speaker 1: of color can trust the medical establishment, given the the
Speaker 1: very uh checkered history with Tuskegee and operating on enslaved people.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's going to be a bit of
Speaker 1: a health to climb, isn't it. It is? And the
Speaker 1: history here is horrible, and so this mistrust or this
Speaker 1: distrust is well placed based on a lot of that history. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's and we were coming at this partner with the
Speaker 1: federal government through Operation War Speed through NIH uh coming
Speaker 1: forward and saying hey, we're an exciting new biotechnology company
Speaker 1: partnered with federal government here to help. Don't start in
Speaker 1: a place of immediate trust. Uh. The thing that we
Speaker 1: discovered was most important is that you have to work
Speaker 1: with those those voices that are already trusted in the community,
Speaker 1: whether those are faith, faith leaders or people that are
Speaker 1: just present in the community offering healthcare advice. Um, there
Speaker 1: are there are voices there who can actually carry that message,
Speaker 1: and you have to make sure they understand and they
Speaker 1: have access to information, they make their own judgments about
Speaker 1: whether whether to recommend this or not, and those that
Speaker 1: do can then become powerful advocates to their communities. But
Speaker 1: you're not going to do it just by coming in
Speaker 1: and saying, hey, we're here to help, because frankly, the
Speaker 1: history on that as you just point to a Tuskegee
Speaker 1: UM and other instances has been quite quite horth We'll
Speaker 1: be right back after this short break. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: the storage requirements. MADERNA and five or vaccines dr Hope
Speaker 1: require special treatment if you will cold temperatures from madernast
Speaker 1: sub arctic temperatures for fiser and outside those conditions, they
Speaker 1: have a limited shelf life. Does this give astro Zeneca's
Speaker 1: vaccine and edge because it doesn't have those requirements, It
Speaker 1: can be produced in mass quantities and can be shipped
Speaker 1: and uh, and it's and it's quite inexpensive. Are all
Speaker 1: those things pointing to a better situation for astra Zeneca?
Speaker 1: I well, I'm grateful for the fact that astro and
Speaker 1: it can make many more doses, and so yes, I think,
Speaker 1: I think in some ways it is UM. There are differences.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you look at our storage conditions,
Speaker 1: our our vaccine can be stored in a standard freezer
Speaker 1: or refrigerator. It doesn't require any dry ice or special equipment.
Speaker 1: Most refrigeration comes with freezing and the temperatures are the
Speaker 1: same as you have in your home fridge. It's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that exists in almost every pharmacy in
Speaker 1: this country almost every doctor's off office. We do need
Speaker 1: to be stored in the freezer part for up to
Speaker 1: six months, and we only last about a month thirty
Speaker 1: days in the refrigerator. UM. And that contrast with AstraZeneca
Speaker 1: as where you pointed to, I think they're they're currently
Speaker 1: the most amenable distribution where they last six months in
Speaker 1: the refrigerator. Now they still require refrigeration, uh. And so
Speaker 1: you still need a piece of equipment that exists again
Speaker 1: much more broadly available. But there are not vaccines right
Speaker 1: now that are stable at justist room temperature that can
Speaker 1: go into those non cold chain logistics. So I think
Speaker 1: the reality of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the reason why I
Speaker 1: was so excited about the announcement this week is that
Speaker 1: although the efficacy wasn't as strong, uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: average efficacy was sev versus the potential for many more
Speaker 1: doses and for being the ability to distribute them into
Speaker 1: areas and maybe don't have freezers but do have refrigerators.
Speaker 1: UM provides a real opportunity here. UM. The cost of
Speaker 1: the vaccines, I mean, I I think in general cost
Speaker 1: does matter for sure, UM, and the Astrogenica vaccine can
Speaker 1: be made more cheaply, which is good, but it's important
Speaker 1: to know that the costs of these vaccines, whether you're
Speaker 1: talking about five dollars or twenty dollars, is a PRODCE
Speaker 1: is a is a fraction of the costs that are
Speaker 1: being incurred just with things like testing UM you know,
Speaker 1: which we all seem to do on a on a
Speaker 1: regular basis, or any of the other interventions. And so
Speaker 1: they're they're quite they're quite reasonably inexpensive. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I think um is exciting about vaccines is
Speaker 1: and it's often said that next to clean water, nothing
Speaker 1: has done more for human health than vaccines economically and
Speaker 1: socially in terms of value. But there is a focus
Speaker 1: on the difference between the three pounds or the five
Speaker 1: dollars and twenty dollars of the prices, and in that sense,
Speaker 1: I do think it's it's it's good that there's a
Speaker 1: lower cost option in the Aftrizonica vaccines. So how much
Speaker 1: will the majournal vaccine cost. So we've entered into agreements
Speaker 1: with governments, the government of the United States agreements of
Speaker 1: its average price about twenty dollars per dose. UM is
Speaker 1: so the first doses are fifteen to sixteen dollars uh,
Speaker 1: and that's you know, where we're selling it to. Almost
Speaker 1: all of the sales has have been to governments, to
Speaker 1: be fair, because governments are the best positions to distribute this.
Speaker 1: This is not something in the first half of next
Speaker 1: year during the pandemic phase that many of us are
Speaker 1: going to go to CBS and get or rite at
Speaker 1: of a wall. Grief kid, it's it's really going to
Speaker 1: come through your public health departments. So at twenty dollars
Speaker 1: a dose, that's that's forty dollars per two doses roughly. Um.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's hopefully uh not a big barrier
Speaker 1: to broad adoption. In fact that we we priced it
Speaker 1: that way with the U. S. Government and sold to
Speaker 1: USE government on the principle that it would be given
Speaker 1: free to every American regardless of their ability to pay.
Speaker 1: So we didn't we didn't try and maximize price or anything.
Speaker 1: We said, we want to make sure this is given away,
Speaker 1: and the US government has agreed that they will not
Speaker 1: charge anybody for those doses, regardless of your ability, and
Speaker 1: so essentially the vaccine is going to be free to
Speaker 1: Americans every vaccine that's being created, Every vaccine purchased by
Speaker 1: works operational work speed, including the Materurna vaccine and the
Speaker 1: astros in A vaccine and Fiser vaccine, all of that
Speaker 1: will be free to Americans through the worst speed and ship.
Speaker 1: So well, I get to pick which vaccine I want,
Speaker 1: I don't think so I don't know. UM, it's it's
Speaker 1: that is that is one of the the The reality
Speaker 1: is that the the Department of Health in your state
Speaker 1: UM may or may not want to engage in that
Speaker 1: kind of you know, letting people choose which one they'd like.
Speaker 1: I laugh only because every family member I have will
Speaker 1: be really upset if they don't receive the Materna vaccine.
Speaker 1: But the truth is, like a family all over the country,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it's going to be possible. UM,
Speaker 1: and so uh you will get You will receive a
Speaker 1: vaccine UM that's approved from the FDA, that's safe, and
Speaker 1: that's going to provide a benefit. UM. The Department of
Speaker 1: Health in your state might make a determination to say
Speaker 1: that certain high risk populations we want to get a vaccine.
Speaker 1: It's got a higher faccine like the madern of vaccine UM.
Speaker 1: And if you're healthier, maybe we're gonna give you one
Speaker 1: that has a lower efficacy because you don't need it
Speaker 1: as much. And some of those choices UM may happen
Speaker 1: in terms of how they allocate, but it really did
Speaker 1: fall to the departments of health in the states UM
Speaker 1: to determine how to distribute it. I don't think it
Speaker 1: will be a situation where consumers will get to decide
Speaker 1: until until everybody has had a chance to get a
Speaker 1: vaccine from the federal government, and that maybe next summer,
Speaker 1: at which point maybe people will have the ability to
Speaker 1: go to CBS and make their own line. Let me
Speaker 1: go through quickly the questions from social media. How long
Speaker 1: will the immunity provided by the vaccines last. I'm optimistic
Speaker 1: that we're gonna see immunity last more than a year. UM.
Speaker 1: I think a year seems pretty safe at this point.
Speaker 1: We don't have a year's where the follow up, but
Speaker 1: we've got six months in some of our studies, and
Speaker 1: it looks like the early data shows that we're achieving
Speaker 1: levels of immunity and the blood that we think will
Speaker 1: be protective for at least a year. So you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to get a shot like this or two shots
Speaker 1: every year, potentially like a flu shot. In the worst
Speaker 1: case scenario, you need a booster once a year like
Speaker 1: a flu shot. I think it's unlikely that that's going
Speaker 1: to be necessary. And the reason I say that is
Speaker 1: when you see vaccines that are this effective in our
Speaker 1: case um and it's really the Fiser and Maderna vaccines
Speaker 1: that I'm talking about that are dis effective. I think
Speaker 1: for estras, I think it's a little lower. But when
Speaker 1: you see vaccines are effective, that's kind of like your
Speaker 1: measles vaccine or some of the other tetanus vaccines that
Speaker 1: we used to You don't need to get those every year.
Speaker 1: You can go every five years, every ten years, maybe
Speaker 1: even once in your life. And so when you see
Speaker 1: this kind of efficacy, yeah, you know protection if I
Speaker 1: think it allgurs well, it bodes well for the fact
Speaker 1: that maybe you won't need one ever year, maybe every
Speaker 1: five year, or maybe only when you end up you know,
Speaker 1: with waning immunity, you get a test to show that
Speaker 1: you have lower immunity in your blood, and you just
Speaker 1: get a booster and maybe once every vidouty Well, the
Speaker 1: vaccine prevents spreading of the virus, so we don't know
Speaker 1: for sure yet, but there are hints that it will,
Speaker 1: and so we're optimistic that the vaccine will prevent infections.
Speaker 1: We know from the studies we've run that it prevents disease,
Speaker 1: and so that's probably the most important thing. If you
Speaker 1: never get sick, you never have symptoms, you never get hospitalized,
Speaker 1: it kind of moved through you and you never knew
Speaker 1: it was there. Um, then maybe it doesn't matter as much.
Speaker 1: But the reason is that the studies that we're running,
Speaker 1: what we the endpoints that we were counting where when
Speaker 1: people got sick, because people could tell you they got sick.
Speaker 1: They could call you up and say I'm not feeling well,
Speaker 1: and you could test them, and that's how we knew
Speaker 1: that those cases it happen. In order to figure out
Speaker 1: what somebody got sick but didn't have an infection what's
Speaker 1: called asymptomatic infection, you actually have to test them at
Speaker 1: regular intervals over time, and so we're gonna bring everybody
Speaker 1: back in on the study three months and six months
Speaker 1: and twelve months and figure out if they became infected asymptomatically.
Speaker 1: But that takes time, and so we won't really get
Speaker 1: that data until the early part of nature. What are
Speaker 1: possible side effects from the vaccine. Well, fortunately there haven't
Speaker 1: been any safety issues in our vaccine, and I haven't
Speaker 1: seen any reporter for the others as well, so that's
Speaker 1: good news. Um, the kinds of side effects therefore the
Speaker 1: people are seeing are not really safety, but they're more tolerability.
Speaker 1: Think of them as the aches and pains that you
Speaker 1: get when you get a vaccine. When when you go
Speaker 1: get a flu vaccine, people will say you may have
Speaker 1: some muscle aches and pains, joined as some pains, a headache.
Speaker 1: You may occasionally rarely have a fever. Those are the
Speaker 1: sorts of things that have been seeing mostly it's been
Speaker 1: a couple of days of duration mild to moderate aches
Speaker 1: and pains that you see with many other vaccines. The
Speaker 1: good news on that is those aren't really side effects.
Speaker 1: With the side effects and the way people think about them,
Speaker 1: but actually that is your body's immune system getting turned
Speaker 1: on by the proteins in the back scene or the
Speaker 1: m morna instruction the vaccine so that it can protect
Speaker 1: you against ours code too. And so while people think
Speaker 1: of that maybe as an adverse event as not something
Speaker 1: they want, it's actually a sign that your immune system
Speaker 1: is kicked in and ready to protect you. That brings
Speaker 1: me to my next question. Um, r m RNA vaccines
Speaker 1: problematic for people who have automnimmune disease. There's no evidence
Speaker 1: that m MORNA medicines are problematic for autimmune disease. If anything,
Speaker 1: I think they might be safer, although we have to
Speaker 1: see that over time. The reason I'd say that is
Speaker 1: that there there's no viral vector. There's no virus that's
Speaker 1: infecting you here, so there's a lot of other proteins,
Speaker 1: and a viral vector vaccine like the astrozennicer Johnston johnsons
Speaker 1: that that could do other things to your immune system.
Speaker 1: And similarly, in there were common A protein vaccines, you
Speaker 1: usually give an adjument which you can kick off your
Speaker 1: immune system UM in a non specific way. In the
Speaker 1: case of the m MORNA vaccines, there's neither of those things. UM,
Speaker 1: it's really purely the information and so there's a reason
Speaker 1: for optimism it, but there's really no data yet. UM.
Speaker 1: Certainly there's no evidence that it's it's less safe. I
Speaker 1: guess immunotherapy can sometimes put your immune system in and overdrive,
Speaker 1: so can m r NA put your immune system in
Speaker 1: overdrive for certain patients. So it really depends on what
Speaker 1: you're making with the m morna. And the short answer
Speaker 1: for the vaccines is no, because the m morn a
Speaker 1: is just making the spike protein the coronavirus, and so
Speaker 1: your immune system isn't overdrive against the coronavirus, and only
Speaker 1: we'll get turned on if it sees the coronavirus in
Speaker 1: the future. We do, in the case of cancer vaccines
Speaker 1: or in the case of some of our cancer therapies,
Speaker 1: try and induce an immune response and ramp it up.
Speaker 1: And so there are definitely cases where will express things
Speaker 1: that will try and kick off your immune system. But
Speaker 1: we do those very different types of things in cancer
Speaker 1: where we're trying to, as you just said, turn on
Speaker 1: the immune system so it starts attacking things. In that case,
Speaker 1: the cancer got it. Okay. What about pregnant women, Dr Hoag,
Speaker 1: So we do need to make sure thevaccine is safe
Speaker 1: and pregnant women. Were in discussions with the FDA right now,
Speaker 1: as are the other vaccine developers to figure out the
Speaker 1: best way to do that. There's a couple of ways
Speaker 1: to do it. One is you run a small study. UM.
Speaker 1: The other is that you just follow people over time
Speaker 1: who incidentally get pregnant and make sure through like a
Speaker 1: registry that there's no there's no safety issues there. We
Speaker 1: have completed all of the necessary pre clinical work to
Speaker 1: show that there's no reproductive toxicity issues. We believe it's
Speaker 1: going to be safe. UM. But what remains to be
Speaker 1: done is just followed that more carefully and make sure
Speaker 1: that there are no showstopper concerns. Do you feel that
Speaker 1: safety has been compromised because of the speed in which
Speaker 1: these vaccines have been developed? Do not? UM? I think
Speaker 1: actually this has got to be the gold standard for
Speaker 1: how you respond to pandemics in the future. UM. If
Speaker 1: you think about the size of the trials that have
Speaker 1: been run and the deliberate nature in which they run
Speaker 1: through it. We've run through a phase one study, a
Speaker 1: phase to studies six d people. In our Phase three
Speaker 1: study thirty thou people. That's not commonly done for any
Speaker 1: drug that's approved infect It's a huge number. And if
Speaker 1: you add to that that we did that Advisor did
Speaker 1: that with thirty thousand, and Astra Zeneca has got there's
Speaker 1: going to be hundreds of thousands of people that have
Speaker 1: been tested across these vaccine platforms. That's just not precedented.
Speaker 1: There's not that kind of confidence that we've ever really
Speaker 1: been able to have around new technology, new new drugs,
Speaker 1: new medicines, vaccines in these kings. UM. So I think
Speaker 1: people should take a huge degree of confidence from that. Now,
Speaker 1: we don't have long term follow up. To be fair,
Speaker 1: we do not have two years of history post that vaccine, UM, and,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna need to follow that very closely. But
Speaker 1: the overwhelming majority plus percent events that have been seen
Speaker 1: historically with drugs and vaccines happened in the first two
Speaker 1: months after your vaccine, not two years later. UM. And
Speaker 1: when you say you've got that kind of confidence that
Speaker 1: you've looked really intensively for the first two months, and
Speaker 1: you've got hundreds of thousands of people you've looked in,
Speaker 1: I think you can take a lot of confidence. I
Speaker 1: certainly do, UM. And I don't think that there's been
Speaker 1: any sacrifices on safety. UM. We have moved quickly. I
Speaker 1: think the biggest risk taken were financial. All the way through.
Speaker 1: There were billions of dollars of risk taken financially, and
Speaker 1: in that sense, I think the American people and the
Speaker 1: federal government deserve a lot of credit. UM. Congress with
Speaker 1: the Cares Act and the administration on warp speed UM,
Speaker 1: I think underwrote, wrote UM. The American people underwrote the
Speaker 1: development of vaccines for the entire world. If you look
Speaker 1: at the vaccines that are now getting bought by everybody
Speaker 1: else that's Japan or Europe or the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: including in low and middle income countries, it's really it's
Speaker 1: really the six made in the USA and in the USA.
Speaker 1: And I think while we did it to protect ourselves,
Speaker 1: it's something that I have been proud of as I've
Speaker 1: watched unfold just as American because UM, we although we
Speaker 1: didn't participate in the w h O activities and many
Speaker 1: of the things that were multilateral, we did as a
Speaker 1: as a country underwrite the creation of of the solution
Speaker 1: of the six solutions UM that we think are going
Speaker 1: to get deployed most broadly across the world, and and
Speaker 1: did it in record time, and relied a lot on
Speaker 1: American ingenuity and that you know, the high quality of
Speaker 1: American civil service UH and and workers to to make
Speaker 1: this happen. And I think it's something we will look
Speaker 1: back on and and be proud of. Someone asked, if
Speaker 1: I get the vaccine, am I protected against COVID even
Speaker 1: if of other people are vaccinated. Yes. So the vaccine
Speaker 1: that we're the studies that we're running are happening in
Speaker 1: the middle of the pandemic, and so nobody else is vaccinated. UM.
Speaker 1: And so if we're offering protection against COVID in the
Speaker 1: middle of the pandemic, in very hot areas, UM, you
Speaker 1: can have confidence that even if the people are around
Speaker 1: you aren't vaccinated, that you will not be getting COVID.
Speaker 1: What we don't know, and I think what's oun denying
Speaker 1: My question is, UM, will the virus still be passing
Speaker 1: between us? And if you've got vaccinated, maybe you don't
Speaker 1: get sick? Or what about the other people who didn't
Speaker 1: get baccinated? And in that case, I think the answer
Speaker 1: is yes, they will probably still be at risk until
Speaker 1: we cross a threshold of people that have been vaccinated
Speaker 1: or have immunity because they were sick, and that's just
Speaker 1: because the virus will circulate. Finally, can this virus mutate
Speaker 1: dr hoge and create a new strain of covid COVID
Speaker 1: one for example, where you're going to have to go
Speaker 1: back to square one and start all over again. How
Speaker 1: possible is that? Not meaning to to rein on your
Speaker 1: well deserved parade, UM, I think it's the thing that
Speaker 1: should always concern us. UM. Pandemics do happen, and they
Speaker 1: happen at a regular interval. So this virus has evolved,
Speaker 1: it has mutated a little bit during the year of
Speaker 1: this year of UM. Fortunately, the mutations have have not
Speaker 1: been enough to move away from protection from our vaccines,
Speaker 1: and I think they won't be UM. If I were
Speaker 1: to sort of conjecture, I'd say this virus would have
Speaker 1: to make a lot of changes to avoid the vaccines
Speaker 1: that are currently in development, not just the madernal one.
Speaker 1: That's because we're making the whole spike protein. There are
Speaker 1: you know, one thousand, seven hundred amino acids little pieces
Speaker 1: of protein on it, and evolution or mutation works one
Speaker 1: amino acid at a time. So if our immune system
Speaker 1: can recognize all one thousand, seven hundred, you can change
Speaker 1: a few of those meno acids. You're really going to
Speaker 1: have to make whole scale changes hundreds of them before
Speaker 1: it's unrecognizable to the immune system. And the problem with
Speaker 1: that for a virus is the protein has a job
Speaker 1: to do. It's like a key fitting in a lock.
Speaker 1: You can't make that many changes from a mutation perspective
Speaker 1: before actually it just stops working, and maybe the virus
Speaker 1: stops being able to affect you. So I think starts
Speaker 1: COVID too. I'm very optimistic that it's not going to
Speaker 1: mutate around found our vaccines and we're gonna We're gonna
Speaker 1: get through this. Your question that was about COVID twenty one,
Speaker 1: will there be another coronavirus pandemic? And the answer there
Speaker 1: is almost certainly yes, Probably not this virus, but at
Speaker 1: some point in the decade or hundred years ahead of us,
Speaker 1: a different coronavirus will move out of animals and find
Speaker 1: its way into humans, and we will have no immunity
Speaker 1: to it, and then we'll be racing again and defeat
Speaker 1: it again. That is almost inevitable as well. But do
Speaker 1: you think the technology that you all have established will
Speaker 1: help create new vaccines in the future in a much
Speaker 1: more expedited way. I hope. So, I really hope that
Speaker 1: becomes a long lasting benefit of what we've been through
Speaker 1: in is that governments around the world, including the US,
Speaker 1: look at the technologies that were most useful and say, well,
Speaker 1: we did something epic, heroic. We did in one year,
Speaker 1: the thing that nobody thought was possible. Now, let's figure
Speaker 1: out how to do it in six months. Now, let's
Speaker 1: figure out how we can respond more quickly in the
Speaker 1: next pandemic. But I think it will be technologies like
Speaker 1: Messenger RNA that are going to be at the center
Speaker 1: of that because because at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: they're so flexible, and so I'm very optimistic that we
Speaker 1: will get better and better at being able to beat
Speaker 1: back pandemics with technology like mess and Journey and others,
Speaker 1: perhaps even the well Dr Hope, Stephen Hope, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. You were awesome. Um really, thank you. I
Speaker 1: understood probably nine d four percent of what. I don't
Speaker 1: believe that for a second. I'm sure you got it. All.
Speaker 1: That does it for this bonus episode of Next Question,
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Couric. Thank you so much for listening, and
Speaker 1: have a very happy and safe holiday season. Next Question
Speaker 1: with Katie Couric is a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Katie Kurrik Media. The executive producers are Katie Curic,
Speaker 1: Courtney Litz, and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer is Lauren Hansen.
Speaker 1: Our show producer is Bethan Macaluso. The associate producers are
Speaker 1: Emily Pinto and Derek Clements. Editing by Derrek Clements, Dylan Fagin,
Speaker 1: and Lowell Berlante, Mixing by Dylan Fagin. Our researcher is
Speaker 1: Gabriel Loser. For more information on today's episode, go to
Speaker 1: Katie Curik dot com and follow us on Twitter and
Speaker 1: Instagram at Katie Currich. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.